THE REFUSAL OF BENIN

Adolo is not the subject of this 1987 article but it is interesting to note how mere mention of him supports the argument we are about to make here. For a nation so enamoured by arriving Europeans, Benin's history with various European nations was one fraught with recurring decisions by various Benin kings to block or ban trade with the Europeans. These objections — as we find with Oba Adolo, father of no other than Oba Ovoranmwen himself — were evermore frequent and to do with the same recurring reasons that Esigie had in that first and early ban a good three centuries back, which was the European nature and choice of what they the European increasingly preferred to trade in: human beings. 

Benin’s decision in banning and frequent acts of intrepid withdrawal from the European Trade must and deserves to be seen as a gesture of the refusal by the African and a counter to the contemporaneous norm of what was expected of ‘African Kingdoms’ of the time.


Was the Benin refusal the prevalent attitude of the kingdom or merely intermittent? Was it informed from lack (of not meeting supply) or from conscience? Whatever the case, the running narrative that the kingdom was the kingpin overlord in the grand scheme of European Slave Trade on the coastline of West Africa is in much need of rebuttal, particularly when the various reigning Obas, we now know for a fact, invariably said NO at some point or the other, with some even blocking all contact outright, as we find with both Ehengbuda and Adolo. 


Ryder and Graham and Lovejoy are three historians who have questioned the dominant, British-asserted narrative. But the stereotype remains. Because pinning the transatlantic slave trade on the kingdom of Benin, the internationally recognized sovereign nation of the time, legitimatizes and absolves the European, who, like the British in particular even went as far as outright lying about their role. The European role in the centuries long sale and capture of fellow human beings was especially made into the mass trade it became by arrival of the English, who went from pirates of captured humans to the real McCoy trader in chief, lining slave ports with a slew of henchmen slavers as never before seen. Yet it is this same slaver ethnic group, the English who for long, through propaganda 'publications' by its overnight 'historians' such as Roth Ling and others, claim to have saved Africans from slavery under “Great Benin” powers by creating ‘civilizing’ colonialism. 


What we know for a fact is that precisely because Benin Kingdom was the only legitimate kingdom on the West African coastline that had the power to say No, from Esigie to Ehengbuda to Adolo, the kingdom placed endless bans on the obnoxious matter of the European trade in human beings. The only long reign where there wasn't a ban in place was Ohuan's (1606 -1660) ~ and Ohuan was too nonchalant to remove existing bans, specifically the Esigie ban of 1516! Nor was Ohuan the childless interested in expansion, in fact, he was notoriously disinterested. So then, we are left with Ozolua’s reign, only to find out that while Ozolua’s reign was a period of POWs sold as slaves to the Portuguese, it was an incredibly short reign, a young zestful reign before any mass trade in humans started with the Europeans. Ozolua’s idea was to expand not loose men to 'white man trade'. Most of the hamlets he overcame were also eager to come under the umbrella name of ‘Benin’ especially as it meant little, after all, to be under that umbrella: no change in language, not even of dialect, only the assigning of a title to represent the Oba.


Even so, the dominant Benin character could hardly support Ozolua’s energy for warring expansion. Ozolua was given a moniker, was summarily murdered by his best soldier who reported back to the palace ranks on the excuse that his men could no longer fight and he had to intervene to save the people from the king’s restlessness. For all his expansionism, Ozolua was instead rewarded with a proverb deriding exactly that, a proverb that even today competes with the king’s appellation of ‘Ozolua The Conqueror’.  


Those of us who speak Edo and were the favourites of well-versed elders called ‘opkanike’ (very elderly women) have listened to stories of how very early on, it dawned on Benin that the ovian (the servant) in Portugal was very different from Benin’s concept of the same term and that, further, these folks could not return home — which rendered the sale therefore of all ‘ovie’oba’ (king’s subjects) as ‘ovian’ to a European an abomination. Meaning that, as early as early 1500s, it was already decided that people being sold as ‘ovian’ to Europe was a crime against ’ovie’oba’. Ovie’oba may go to Portugal, but not sold as ‘ovian’.


The meaning of ovie’oba is not the same as ‘king’s slave’ as the English willfully translated it. To be ovie of something is to be the progeny of the thing. Ovie’Edo means ‘children of Edo’, and is often interchanged with ovie’oba: literally ‘children of the king’. The question then is how far spread are the groups considered king’s subjects AKA ‘ovie’oba? 


The next critical question is, did the Benins really have overriding absolute power over outlying areas outside the areas demarcated as ‘ovie’Edo’? We know the answer to this latter question and it is simply No. Even a place as close as the Jekiris areas (todays Warri, for example) though vassals of Benin was out of the control of Benin and although originally created by a prince from Benin Kingdom, was its own independent monarchy. Warri or the Jekiris were also morbid sellers of themselves and their neighbours, the Urhobhos, including the emerging hinterlands cluster of clans being referred to in old Edo, Igala and Owo and other related languages as ‘Igbo’. 


Too often in Benin History, with a large number of princes being birthed to kings, entire groups are taken under the wings of some prince who, having a disagreement with an Oba, relocates his hamlet farther into the hinterlands with only a princely title of 'enogie' as the connection with their ex-homeland. Invariably the old language of Edo gets lost over time and 'enogie' morphs into new pronunciations under new dialects. Even as these groups remain Edoid groups we have a picture of a rather loose-knit i.e. not exclusive to Edo-speaking, rather Edo-originated, widely spread 'subjects of the king'. Were these groups accessible to Benin, the ‘empire’ or ruled independently by the feted local rule? One thing is certain, Benin, having inherited the Ewuare The Great expansionist concept of an umbrella ‘BENIN’ quite possibly assumed all manner of inaccessible groups fell under the Esigie 1506 ban against the European Trade. 


Who then would the kingdom have sold as per the dominant accusation, when according to the Esigie’s decree the idea of trade of the king's subjects was, by 1516 when women were included, an abomination to the ancestors? 


The transatlantic slave trade started from the discovery of the Americas. By the early 1600s, European forces had a well established and mighty foot soldier network of people carriers from selected groups such as the 'Krewmen' of today's Sierra Leone to help carry out the mass sale across West Africa of the captured and the sold. A running, multinational trade in the complete commodification of the African by slaver kingdoms from Europe using the same African as ferocious henchmen and their assistants, with new well feted ‘chiefdom’ created overnight by the Europeans, in particular the English, and consequently often without the participation of legitimate founding native and ancient kingdoms. Like Benin, for a singular example. Gone was the matter of princely diplomacy between Benin and Portugal in the years between the late 1400 to early 1500s. New players had arrived and they had a full half century from mid 1500s onwards to establish a long slew of fully armed ports across the long straggling West African coastline as never before seen. 


All over the coastal edges that were west and south of (the ever-withdrawing, self-isolating) Benin Empire, whose only royal port, by the way, was the port at Gwatto —a port ignored by western historians simply because it refused the trade in humans early on— were slaver ports where previously none had been; and these ports, Bonny, Cotonou, Badagry, to name but a few, with countless in today’s ‘Ghana’, flourished even as the edges of its so-called empire sharply rescind.


Diametrical to all that ‘busyness’ of trade in the captured and the sold is the significant historical fact that 1600s was for Benin the insular century of Ohuan’s reign since his reign lasted just over half of that century. As mentioned earlier, Ohuan was thoroughly disinterested in empire expansion. He was palace-bound, inward looking and indifferent to the Ewuare The Ogidigan’s ‘empire’ project. Ohuan could not have children, and Benin endured his insufferably long reign with most of its outlying hamlets lost to new found 'chiefs' as invented by the British in various enclaves.


Whether from indifference or lack of eligible people, Ohuan could not be bothered to participate in the obnoxious trade the Europeans were hankering after, and the kingdom receded further and further away. Meaning, for a good half century there was no war for POWs, which was historically how Benin traded with the Potoki --even as Benin was not one to see POWs as objects, rather new citizens to be made. No record of oral history or some other record exist to indicate that the most famous warrior-king Ozolua’s reign resulted in mass trade of humans. As mentioned earlier, Ozolua's reign was also very short as the young warrior king was killed by his best friend and general. 


Before Ohuan’s indifference is the completely ignored element of Esigie’s conscience. Indeed, the strange, hardly ever mentioned matter of ‘conscience’ around this issue. It is hard of course for many to think of the African of the time as having ‘conscience’, but let’s be bold and consider just for a moment that it was at all possible some of them did have the strength of character too easily attributed the European and denied the African. 


Whether it was by Esigie’s conscience or Ohuan’s indifference, the fact is that Benin withdrew from the transatlantic slave trade even before it started as what it became. That is a fact of history that should not be denied Benin. 


Yet, the modern and contemporary Benins in wanting to seem mighty, have allowed the abuse and false accusation of Benin Kingdom’s as one of ‘full throttle European Slave Trade’. 


It is nothing but an absurd conceit that the Benins are so unconcerned or will not admit the truth of Benin Kingdom’s powerless hold over surrounding slave-trading ‘vassal kingdoms’ of the delta and even west, in a place like Badagry, which was not exactly the 'Eko' of Ewuare’s Benin Empire. The truth is that "Great Benin" was nowhere in that swampy picture of cruel carrying-ons, whether at Badagry or at the ports in the riverine areas; that Benin simply had no overriding ‘power’ over these supposed ‘vassal kingdoms’; that areas which became known as the Niger-Delta, SouthWest and so on, including the overnight riverine 'Ijaw kingdoms’ that were created by the British at slave ports and for the sake of slaving — areas such as the port at ‘Bonny’ a port that played a fantastically inhumane role of British slavers and their African henchmen —  were not under control of "Great Benin". 


The modern and contemporary Benins however would rather they are falsely accused of being overlords to smaller kingdoms whose present ‘kings’ are nearly all overnight appointees created by the British in ‘king-making’ sprees designed to serve the British in slave-trading. 


We know that from the time of the Potoki whose pope ruled against selling arms to Benin and other African friends, Benin had no guns either saved the ones it’s iron smiths could fashion; and the guilds were from what accounts we have apparently either uninterested or simply unversed in gun-making. Knowledge is notoriously and sadly kept ‘secret’ by the kingdom, which means even if some master member of one of the many ancient Benin guilds had known a thing or two, which the Potoki would have ensured he didn’t, such a master guilder would have more likely refused to share and rather kept such knowledge in strict esoteric, ‘sacred’ realm even unto death. Especially as it is about instruments that take lives. Stuff of nature and man made object capable of taking human lives easily fall into the sacred for the African spirituality than they do for the European’s adoptive Christianity. The gun was not sacred for the Potoki pope or priest. But same would have been for a Benin Ohen and consequently, for a master smither member belonging to any of the ancient Benin guilds. The European slaver not only had guns and industry of guns but as well multitudes of both local and migrant African ‘henchmen’ hardy for smuggling raids and deft at bargaining rounds, whopping the captured across terrains. 


The lack of evidence of arms inspired the British need to jump up the ‘juju’ charge against Benin, propaganda that the British were so good at selling through books and pamphlets written by family members of the looters of the very 1897 war that ushered in colonization. 


So there. We began the colonial country that would become known as ‘Nigeria’ with the manufactured lie that people far flung and unhindered by Benin had somehow been freed of the juju meted out by Benin. This was basically the running claim in the British colonization project on our lands. It became the British running lie about the European Slave Trade. Which was that the latter was rather a case of juju of which they, the Brits, as saviours, had been sent to free the natives. They had apparently freed the natives from juju, and not from the international European trade of which they were its most adept and prolific masters. That part was almost never taught, certainly not to us in Nigeria.


There is a distinction between Benin the Empire and Benin the kingdom and much accusations have for far too long been laid on the Edo-speaking people over areas of the former. For a good two millennia, before the expansionist ideas of Ewuare The Great, the kingdom was the Edo-speaking Benin Kingdom. Then Ewuare's idea of one people under the courtly rule and protection of Benin, with their own cultures and language/dialects. When the English landed and by the early 1600s set upon their mass trade in humans, they set about creating appointee 'kings' to facilitate that trade such that what was created by Ewuare and expanded on by Ozolua was distorted by the reality that outlying coastal areas far from the eyes of Benin were already being swamped in the business of trade in humans. 


The Edo Benins has had to bear, even believe of themselves the lies and propaganda and all that has had its impact. The isolation of Benin’s refusal followed the discrimination during the British colonialism era against the Benins, which continued into independence and even today, chards of that propaganda prop up everywhere whether on social media or the ethno-chauvinism called “3 main tribes”, which is the Nigerian reality of unquestioned, full fledged tribalism against so-called minorities. 


The incredible thing of course is that despite the obfuscation and the lies, the Edo race know that they are favoured by the very thing used against them: their CONTINUITY (which we have earlier addressed in another post). The signs of what they have to do in preservation have not always been clear, but it has always been through Benin the kingdom, in its aboriginal origin as Idu Igodomidodo, whichever way it is written in the romanized alphabet across the ages, whether Idu, Ado, Ido, Oedo, Edo, it is the same Edo the language, kingdom and people. 


The Benin story is a story which we are here saying is one of a long history of the REFUSAL, of an ‘empire’ with no real centralized nor absolute control on activities in the vast domain under the umbrella name, ‘Benin’. 


— Architecture Of Unforgetting



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IMAGE:  "Among the hundreds of ivories appropriated from the compounds of Benin City in 1897, the carved tusks com missioned by Oba Ovonramwen for his ancestral altars can be identified with confidence. This might be expected, because these ivories were relatively new and showed little wear when they arrived in Europe. Moreover several British government officials and traders had visited the city between 1888 and 1896, and provided written and visual information about them. In contrast, there is some confusion about the ivories commissioner by Oba Eweka lI, who succeeded his exiled father in 1914 after a seventeen-year interregnum. Every aspect of Eweka's reestablishment of court traditions was under considerable scrutiny from the colonial government, and Benin's ivory carving had won the admiration or European col lectors and scholars. Nevertheless, few records are extant... 


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