Across the territory known as Biafra, silence arrived before the rumble of conflict. Engines that once connected towns stalled in the roads. Generators that had lit homes stopped turning. Petrol and diesel, the invisible lifeblood of everyday life, ceased to flow as a federal land and sea blockade took hold between 1967 and 1970. The Nigerian Civil War was not just fought with guns and shells. It became a contest of survival, in which fuel shortages threatened both civilian life and armed resistance.
Biafra lacked access to refined petroleum and had no major refineries of its own. While crude oil was present within its borders, the machinery to transform crude into usable fuels did not exist under normal circumstances. With imports cut off by the blockade, Biafrans faced a stark choice: yield to isolation or improvise solutions from what was at hand.
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RAP: Science Mobilised Under Siege
At the heart of Biafra’s response was the Research and Production (RAP) Directorate. This wartime institution brought together scientists, engineers, and technicians to develop technologies that could help a besieged republic survive against overwhelming odds. RAP is well documented for its production of weapons, ammunition, armoured vehicles, and other military hardware that played a critical role in Biafra’s extended resistance.
RAP did not operate from a single visible headquarters. It worked through dispersed laboratories and workshops that shifted locations to evade bombardment and maintain secrecy. Among its leadership was mechanical engineer Gordian Obumneme Ezekwe, who oversaw efforts including the creation of local refineries to produce fuel products during the blockade.
Improvised Refineries and the Art of Distillation
Historians and veteran accounts agree that Biafrans undertook efforts to refine crude oil locally. One method involved sets of modular distillation vessels that drew on the basic scientific principle of fractional distillation, heating crude oil and collecting different products at specific temperature ranges. Evidence suggests that some of these homemade installations produced petrol, kerosene, and diesel within Biafra.
Described in wartime recollections as rows of metal drums and pipes, crude oil was heated, vapours channelled through condensers, and fuels collected in separate containers. The process required careful management of heat and timing to draw off lighter products like petrol before heavier ones such as diesel. One engineer observed this method producing several hundred gallons of fuel per day in one unit at a divisional headquarters.
These local distillation units were not industrial refineries, but they functioned well enough to keep vehicles moving and generators running in the absence of external supplies. Their existence was acknowledged by wartime observers and later historians alike.
Beyond Crude Oil: Searching for Alternatives
RAP’s work extended beyond crude oil distillation. Reports from participants and later interviews with scientists involved in the war describe attempts to derive aviation fuel from alternative feedstocks. One such account centres on Professor Felix Oragwu, a physicist involved with RAP, whose team experimented with processing palm oil into a form of aviation fuel when conventional supplies ran out.
While this achievement is mentioned in retrospective profiles and oral history accounts, mainstream academic documentation on its operational impact in flight remains limited. It is clear, however, that such experimentation reflected the extraordinary measures scientists took to sustain Biafran operations under blockade.
RAP also experimented with other materials. Anecdotal sources describe improvised rocket fuels developed using local ingredients such as cassava and sugarcane derivatives, used alongside efforts in weapons development.
Grassroots Innovation and Everyday Survival
The ingenuity of Biafran scientists was not confined to formal laboratories. Local residents, soldiers, and technicians learned from RAP methods and constructed their own small distillation setups in backyards and hidden clearings. Reports from wartime observers note these so-called “mini-refineries” produced fuel locally, helping keep personal vehicles and essential equipment operational.
These improvised systems did not match industrial facilities in safety or scale but symbolised a broader spread of technical knowledge as necessity drove ordinary people to innovate.
Legacy of Wartime Engineering
When the war ended in 1970 and Biafra ceased to exist as a political entity, many of these improvised technologies were dismantled or abandoned. Some engineers and scientists returned to civilian life or moved abroad. Formal documentation of RAP’s technical achievements remains limited in academic literature, but surviving artefacts and oral histories testify to a remarkable episode of wartime adaptation.
The techniques used in local crude oil distillation have been widely cited as early precedents to later artisanal fuel-making practices in the Niger Delta region, where community-level refining emerged in subsequent decades.
What emerged from the blockade was not industrial might, but a culture of survival-driven innovation, one where scientific knowledge, local materials, and sheer determination combined to keep a besieged society moving.
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Author’s Note
This article examines how, under total blockade during the Nigerian Civil War, Biafran scientists and technicians improvised fuel production and related technologies through the Research and Production Directorate. It highlights how local distillation methods emerged from necessity, how experimentation extended beyond crude oil refining, and how wartime adaptation left a lasting imprint on Nigerian technical history.
References
- “Biafran Research and Production work during the Civil War,” turn0search4 account.
- Profile of Professor Felix Oragwu and fuel experiments, turn0search3.
