Benjamin Adekunle

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General Benjamin Adesanya Maja Adekunle, Nigerian Army, (Rtd.) (Born June 26, 1936) in Kaduna. His father was a native of Ogbomosho, while his mother was a member of the Bachama tribe. He underwent secondary education at the government college, Okene (in present day Kogi State). He enlisted in the Nigerian Army in 1958 shortly after completing his school certificate examinations. He passed the army selection examinations and was accepted at the prestigious Sandhurst military academy, where he and his course mates were imbued with a thorough academic grounding in the art of warfare. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on December 15, 1960. As a platoon commander, he served in the Kasai province of Congo with the 1QONR (1st Battalion) during his first tour of duty with UN peace keeping operations in that country (ONUC). In 1962, Lt. Adekunle became Aide-de-Camp to the governor of the eastern region, Sir Akanu Ibiam. The following year, as a Captain, he was posted back to the Congo as Staff Captain (A) to the Nigerian Brigade HQ at Luluabourg - under Brigadier B. Ogundipe. In 1964, Major Adekunle attended the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington, in India. When he returned he was briefly appointed Adjutant General at the Army Headquarters in May 1965 to replace Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, who was proceeding on a course outside the country. However, he later ceded the position to Lt. Col. James Pam and was posted back to his old Battalion (1st Bn) in Enugu as a Company Commander.

He later assumed command of the Lagos Garrison as a substantive Lt. Col. When the Biafra civil war erupted in July 1967, Adekunle was tasked to lead elements which included two new battalions (7th and 8th) - to conduct the historic sea borne assault on Bonny. He was promoted Colonel after the Bonny landing. The 6th (under Major Jalo) and 8th (under Major Ochefu) battalions of the Lagos Garrison subsequently took part in operations to liberate the Midwest following the Biafran invasion of August 1967. The 7th (under Major Abubakar) stayed behind to hold Bonny. Because Major Jalo's outfit was seconded to Lt. Col. Murtala Mohammed's 2nd Division, Adekunle was left with only the 8th Battalion at Escravos. He, therefore, protested to Army HQ and got the Lagos garrison upgraded to Brigade status through the creation of the 31 and 33 Battalions (under Majors Aliyu and Hamman, respectively). This Brigade, combined with elements of the Lagos garrison along the eastern seaboard, was officially designated the 3 Infantry Division. However, Colonel Adekunle did not think the name "3 Infantry Division" was sensational enough nor did it project the nature of the unique terrain in which his men had to fight. Therefore, without formal approval from Army HQ, he renamed it the " 3 Marine Commando (3MCDO)." The "Black Scorpion" as he came to be known, as leader of the Third Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Federal Army was easily the most controversial, celebrated and mythologized figure in the war of attrition that laid the foundations for Nigeria's contemporary crisis; and threw a wedge into the national fabric. Adekunle led the Third Marine Commando Division with such great panache and determination, and the foreign media, in looking for human angle stuff about the Biafran war found Adekunle a ready source of news. Benjamin Adekunle was promoted Brigadier-General in 1972. On August 20th, 1974, he was compulsorily retired from the Army.

Gen. Adekunle gave a rather grandiose account of his military career in the auto-biographical The Nigeria-Biafra Letters: A Soldier's Story. Among Nigerians, he is not regarded as highly as his memoirs present him and these writings are seen by many in Nigeria to be another egotistical show and revision of Nigerian history so common among former military rulers and corrupt officials. Many Igbos, who made up the majority of the citizens of Biafra, remember him as a genocidal butcher. One particularly infamous quote he was said to have uttered during the Nigerian Civil War stated, "I want to see no Red Cross, no Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary and no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Igbo from having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the centre of Igbo territory, we shoot at everything even at things that do not move."