Amanchor Cave

Useful Information

Location:	Amanchor, Etiti, Edda 490101, Ebonyi, Nigeria (5.809069, 7.819980)
Open:	no restrictions. [2025]
Fee:	free. [2025]
Classification:	Karst Cave
Light:	bring torch
Dimension:	L=4,000 m.
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	Obinna F. Emeafor, Chigozie J. Odum (2019): Amanchor Cave As A Potential Tourist Destination, Journal of Tourism and Heritage Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2019, pp. 33-44. academia.edu DOI
Address:	Amanchor Cave, Amanchor, Etiti, Edda 490101, Ebonyi, Nigeria, Tel: +234-.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

Description

Amanchor Cave was discovered by a local hunter named Ofia Ugo or Uko. He named it Ogba Amanchor. The cave served as a hideout for the locals during the Nigeria/Biafra war.

The cave has a 6 m high entrance portal. The cave floor has a steep step right at the entrance, which would require climbing, but the locals installed a wooden staircase for the visitors. As far as we know this is the only development of the cave, but the rest of the visit is more or less level. Good walking shoes and a headlamp are strongly recommended.

The cave is said to be 4 km long, which makes it one of the longest caves in Nigeria. The cave is again, like many other Nigerian caves, found on numerous webpages as it is rather popular, but hard facts are extremely rare. We have no location, no description, and no speleological literature. Unfortunately there are also no pictures or youTube videos, which seem to be the only halfway reliable source of information in this country. Even the Wikipedia page is astonishing uninformative, it just repeats the babble of other pages. As a result we have used the location of the village, where you should ask the locals for a guide. Getting there is quite a feat, as the road is reportedly extremely bad, even for Nigerian roads. For the last kilometers it was necessary to use a motorbike as the road was not navigable with cars.

There is actually a reason why we listed this cave despite all these facts. There is a single paper about this cave, which we listed in the literature section. This cave was evaluated as a future tourist cave, probably a semi-wild cave, which would bring visitors, work and income to the remote village. Being listed in leaflets and on websites before the development has actually started is probably a poor idea. On the other hand, it might speed up the process.