Walbe gained notoriety as a conspirator in the July 1966 countercoup which resulted in the murder of the second Nigerian Head of State, General Aguiyi Ironsi and the Military Governor of the Western Region, Lt Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi.
Akahan was one of the leaders of the July 1966 counter-coup in which Aguiyi-Ironsi was killed and replaced General Yakubu Gowon, and in which there was a mass slaughter of Igbo officers at 4th Battalion in Ibadan under Akahan's command.
Interestingly 40 years after his murder Aguiyi-Ironsi's son, Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, was to become Nigeria's Minister of Defence and ironically he took over that position from General Theophilus Danjuma, the man that had killed his father 40 years earlier.