How a little improvised biafran weapon wiped out an entire Nigerian Military Division.

Today Marks 53 years of the Abagana Ambush , how a little unknown Biafran Major Jonathan Uchendu using a locally manufactured biafran weaponry with 700 ill-equipped biafran soldiers wiped out 98% of the 2nd Division of the Nigerian Army reducing a 100 vehicle column of foreign armored Personnel carriers , Tankers and other military hardware into rubble and ashes , sending General Murtala Mohammed into a self imposed exile till the end of the war re enacting the David vs Goliath Scenario more than 4000 years after the actual event

The Abagana ambush : the greatest battle of the Nigerian-Biafran War


THE OGBUNIGWE BOMB: commonly known as Ogbunigwe during the Biafran war, its fame and mystique traveled wide on both sides of the divide. Considered a technological breakthrough of Igbos during the war, the bomb, which may well be a higher version of today’s I.E.Ds (improved explosive device) was deployed to great effect by the Biafran army.

With the economic blockade of Biafra having a telling effect, the people turned inwards, devising survival strategies and apparatuses. Apart from extracting and refining their own petrol; they also had improvised armoured tanks and piloted their planes. The renowned Professor Godian Ezekwe led a team of scientists in what was known as the Biafran Research and Production Unit, RAP. This think-tank group is said to have developed rockets, bombs and telecommunications gadgets.

According to Achebe, quoting another great author, Professor Chukwuemeka Ike, the ogbunigwe was put to so much devastating effect against the federal troops that the fear of the explosive was the beginning of wisdom for them; to the extent that the Biafrans succeeded more with it than any imported weapons. Ike in his book, Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra, captures it thus: “You must have heard that the Nigerians are now so mortally afraid of Ogbunigwe that each advancing battalion is now preceded by a herd of cattle.”

Boasting about this feat in what is regarded his last official wartime speech, Ojukwu said: “ in three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention… we built bombs, rockets, and we designed and built our own refinery, and our own delivery systems and guided them far. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles.

“The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, we maintained them under heavy bombardment… we spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity.

“In three years, we had broken the technological barrier, became the most advanced black people on earth.”

THE ABAGANA AMBUSH: March 25, 1968 probably remains one of the most memorable days in the Nigeria –Biafra war. It was the day the Nigerian side suffered the heaviest single loss in the war. Known as the Abagana Ambush, the Second Division of the Nigerian Army led by Col. Murtala Muhammed had finally crossed the Niger Bridge after failing in the first attempt (having been repelled by the Col. Joe Achuzia’s guerrilla army and suffering heavy casualties). Having crossed into Biafra, the plan was to link up with the First Division led by Col. Shuwa penetrating the Igbo heartland through the north from Nsukka. As Achebe notes: “The amalgamation of these two forces, the Nigerian Army hoped, would then serve as a formidable force that would ‘smash the Biafrans’”. Col. Muhammed was said to have assembled and deployed, a convoy of 96 vehicles and four armoured cars to facilitate this plan on March 31, 1968.

However, Biafran intelligence was said to have got wind of the move and a Major Jonathan Uchendu was charged with working out a counter-attack strategy. With a 700-man team, a counter- attack plan was hatched that essentially sealed up the Abagana Road while the troops lie in ambush in a nearby bush waiting patiently for the advancing Nigerians and their reinforcements.

Achebe writes that “Major Uchendu’s strategy proved to be highly successful. His troops destroyed Muhammed’s entire convoy within one and half hours. All told, the Nigerians suffered about 500 casualties. There was minimal loss on the Biafran side.” It was probably the most resounding battle ever won by the Biafrans in the entire war.

ACHEBE, OKIGBO AND MAJOR IFEAJUNA: Christopher Okigbo, the cerebral poet and Achebe had known from their Government College, Umuahia days. Though Okigbo was two years junior to Achebe in class, they struck up friendship very quickly and maintained the closeness till Okigbo’s tragic end in the war front. After Umuahia, they were to meet again at the University College, Ibadan, and while Achebe was in the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Ikoyi , Lagos, Okigbo was West Africa manager for Cambridge University Press. Their friendship was such that Okigbo was godfather to one of Achebe’s sons and on many occasions during the ensuing tumult in Igboland, Okigbo played ‘father ‘ role to the Achebe house- hold.

When the war was in full force and all the Igbo personalities had returned, Enugu was the natural settlement for most of the elite returnees in the early days before the ancient town was bombed into submission by the federal forces. It was in Enugu; precisely on Michael Okpara Avenue, that Achebe and Okigbo set up their publishing outfit called Citadel Press. It was indeed the idea of Okigbo who thought out and even worked out the whole project before getting Achebe to come on board. The crux of it all was to publish educational materials, including children’s books and books that would capture the ongoing crisis.

The first book Citadel Press worked on was, “How the Dog Became a Domesticated Animal,” by John Iroaganachi. Achebe and Okigbo chose to rework the folktale and turn it around to become, “How the Leopard got its Claws.” This book never got to see the light of the day before the shelling of Enugu became unbearable and most people had to scamper and relocate further into the hinterland.

While Citadel still functioned, Okigbo had brought a manuscript from Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, one of the five majors who plotted the January 1966 coup. The twain were thoroughly disappointed with Ifeajuna’s account of that critical event of Nigeria’s life. Hear Achebe: “I read the treatise through quickly and became more and more disappointed as I went along. Ifeajuna’s account showcased a writer trying to pass himself off as something that he wasn’t. For one, the manuscript claimed that the entire coup d’etat was his show, that he was the chief strategist, complete master mind, and executer, not just one of several. He recognized the presence of his coconspirators but did not elevate their involvement to any level of importance.”


Chukwuma Nzeogwu, one of the chief protagonists of the January 1966 coup called the manuscript a lie while Achebe and Okigbo thought it too irresponsible to deserve publication. The manuscript was later to vanish to the regret of Achebe who thought it could have been preserved at least as a version of what transpired on that fateful January of 1966. Christopher Okigbo who had become a Major in the Biafran army was to be felled in the war front in August 1967, in Ekwegbe, close to Nsukka.

Achebe who had fled from Enugu under the hale of shelling returned to Citadel Press after the war to find the small building reduced to ruble. It was instructive that a number of buildings in the vicinity had been unscathed by the conflict, but this one was pummeled to the ground. It was the work of someone or some people with an ax to grind, he thinks. TOMORROW: THE ECONOMIC BLOCKADE AND STARVATION; EPILOGUE


https://thenationonlineng.net/there-was-a-country-ogbunigwe-abagana-ambush-achebe-okigbo-and-ifeajuna/

i still repeat this , the Nigerian system cannot stop igbos, if a little igbo made Ogbunigwe could destroy Soviet Union Tanks and British Arsenal then 53 years ago then Igbos have no competitors