Bonny Landing
Nigerian amphibious landing during the Nigerian Civil War
The Bonny Landing was a Nigerian amphibious operation carried out on 25 July 1967 during the early stages of the Nigerian Civil War. The landings occurred on the Biafran-held Bonny Island and the adjacent Bonny River.
After the declaration of a blockade and subsequent police action against Biafra, the Nigerian Navy began drawing up plans for an amphibious operation on Bonny, the first action involving Nigerian naval forces since the 1914 Naval operations against German Kamerun. The capture of Bonny, which housed Nigeria's only export terminal for crude oil, also meant to secure the backing of Shell-BP and British government for the federal cause.
A taskforce of nine ships under Captain Nelson Soroh and troops of Benjamin Adekunle's Third Division left Lagos on 22 July. After a brief bombardment and naval engagement they overcame the light Biafran defenses to secure the Island by the next day.
The Bonny landing was the first amphibious operation by a modern Black African armed force in history.
Background
Following secession, The Biafran government immediately sought to assert control over its petroleum industry to establish their new nation's economic viability. During the 60's, The former Eastern Region made up approximately 63 percent of Nigeria's petroleum output of which the British consortium Shell-BP was responsible for 84 percent of production. On 19 June, the Permanent Secretary in the Biafran Ministry of Finance wrote to the Shell-BP requesting payment of royalties, estimating its operations for half of 1967 at £3.51 million.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140027077. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bonny Landing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.