The Shy Warrior who saw the nymph Agbagbon with his naked eye, the punishment of Oboro-Uku and how the abduction of Adesuwa caused a war…

The Esigie ban on the sale of humans was fully effective as early as 1516 for both genders. However in the mid to late 1700s, during the reign of Oba Akengbuda, the kingdom suddenly allowed itself to participate in a trade that Esigie had decreed forbidden. Why? 

Let us recall firstly that the 1700s was the zenith of the European Slave Trade on the West African coastline and that, for much of the up and coming merchant European class, the sale of Africans was one of the most profitable and colony expanding enterprise. Whereas for the so-called ’Great Benin’ mentioned in pre-1600s texts, in adhering to its beloved king’s century old ban on the trade, experienced rapidly receding boundaries with the advent of slaving European traders stationed all around the outskirts of its fast shrinking empire. 

Why then did the reclusive kingdom, refusing to join the slave trade for nearly two centuries prior to 1750s, suddenly had men to send off from Gwatto? (Gwatto being the only port, by the way, under the Benin Kingom). What happened to change the long in place Esigie’s ban for that short timeframe in the late 1700s when “non-Benin” were sent off from Gwatto on Landolphe’s ship? Who were these ‘non-Benin’ men?

Well, that is where the fantastic title comes in. There are entire areas of oral history locked within the place itself and its oral traditions and, unless a historian is fully committed to lived exploration, even most capable (whether of foreign, and sadly local, such as the case with Egharevgha) may have no access. To date, no historian of the history of Benin has ever demonstrated lived commitment in their academic research work. Nor is work written by historians descended from Benin easily accepted into the canon. Rather, extant texts on the history of Benin remain ‘compilations’ by white men read by the esoteric departments involved where the same group then try to formulate same old ideas (with the exception of a few of course) on ‘extant material’, meaning really what other white men have compiled, with the hegemony of Egharevha as the useful ‘local source’ looming largely behind the compilations, especially post 1950s. Without much ploughing of the far recesses of myths, fables and the oral tradition of actual ‘history keeping’ of which the traditions of the Benins are most adept, the real stuff of history is lost and the material held captive to the condemning gaze of which Benin unduly suffered as a result of Britain’s highly successful anti-Benin propaganda pre and post colonialism. 

“Waree” = Warri 

Though in our opinion James D Graham was one of the few with the courage to step outside of the status quo of attributing to the Benin the so-called horrors. The sudden participation in the late 1700s by the fast shrinking kingdom (whose’s ‘comeback’ participation was, as Graham examines or the image-text attests, minor at best) had, by the very successful British propaganda spread post 1897, accounted entirely as ‘testament’ over the next centuries and even to date. Graham was one of the few historians with the boldness (frankly, absence of bias for or against) and strength of scholarly commitment to examine the material before him beyond the established accepted view of Benin Kingdom’s ‘overlord participation’ in the European Slave Trade. As we know now (and matter of fact, may have always suspected) the reclusive kingdom was, save for its imaginative hold on the early Europeans and relative to same, entirely absent in the European TransAltantic Slave Trade. More or less. 

Yet, the tools that James D. Graham had at his disposal were still largely the extant text problematized in our opening paragraphs above. The historian of Benin’s history today, should any emerge, will need to seek out and be open to the ‘full picture’.

There exist areas of oral history mentioned earlier available within the place itself and its traditions that shed light not just on the dry accounts of foreign text like Graham’s, but as well expose the dimensions of colonial propaganda of the ex-slavers, the British. Better yet, these areas help answer questions one might have as people with lineages from the place, for example, questions such how to understand the nature of things at that time: the people themselves, beyond the propaganda adopted by the Nigerian colonial education system. Even as these in turn expose one to and in doing help make sense of the breath of collective capitulation and indifference that emerged shortly after —which in this very story of The Abduction Of Adesuwa, would mean shortly after the reign of Akenzua I who lost the court’s reserves and the immediate successor, Akengbuda, who replenished what was wasted.

The subject under our study, Benin itself, as historical place and geography, had its actors as lived and imaginative within these —not merely the happenstance of foreign interference —, and these actors consisted of not only key actors, but as well the people themselves and the power of their myths and lore that invariably shaped quotidian and significant events of the day into history.

Even today, foreign speak continue to represent the history of Africans, even in a country, like ‘Nigeria’ where no ‘non-African’ group has ever permanently settled. The goddess-nymph Agbagbon (to beat against the world —also Igbaghon) was never separated from her river, which was named after her. The river known to the people as Igbangbon however was written down as ‘River Jamieson’ by the colonial British. And eventually much is forgotten by the people of their own lores, even their own roles, both pre existing and the aftermaths, of the power of their millennia old myths, of the stories that turned at a time with such force they set off a series of events, good or bad.

As far as a people fail to expressly put down the full extent of their own oral history into written account, in the full extent of things — a feat which frankly is impossible but surely should be the noble quest of the so-called princes and whatnots, to fund the scholars amongst the people— the history of a place will always a bit of hearsay (usually from or by their victors), and if they are old enough, ‘of mystery and things unknowable’. Perhaps this latter option has been, since the colonial and postcolonial assault, what Benin has resigned itself towards?

The surreal title above, which tell of actual happenings on the ground in the mid 1700s is exactly one of these that even a capable historian like Graham, apparently had no clue about and so could not apply the rich tapestry behind them to provide further, deeper insight on the events and accounts compiled during his research.

The title tells of a story that, like a wallop of thread, unravels the nature of events to help us excavate what happened circa late 1700s.

Stay tuned. 

Architecture Of Unforgetting

Article first written January 22, 2022

Updated with image Aug 1 2026