Nana Olomu

Nana Olomu
Statue of Nana Olomu outside his former residence in Koko
Born	Eriomala c. 1852 Jakpa, Benin River, Warri Kingdom
Died	3 July 1916 (aged about 64)
Other name	Nanna Olomu
Occupation	Palm oil merchant
Title	Governor of the Benin River

Nana Olomu (also written Nanna Olomu; born Eriomala; c. 1852 – 3 July 1916) was an Itsekiri palm-oil merchant and political leader in the western Niger Delta. After inheriting the extensive trading organisation of his father, Olomu, he was chosen by Itsekiri elders as Governor of the Benin River in 1884. The office combined commercial and political authority during the interregnum in the Warri kingship; it was distinct from the position of Olu of Warri.

By the early 1890s, Nana's organisation controlled much of the trade between European firms on the lower Benin River and Urhobo palm-oil producers inland. His authority rested on commercial alliances and credit as well as armed canoes, agents and enslaved labour. British officials initially endorsed his authority but, after installing a more direct administration in 1891, treated the governorship as obsolete and sought to open the hinterland to direct trade. The dispute culminated in the British blockade and bombardment of Nana's fortified town of Ebrohimi in 1894. He escaped, surrendered voluntarily in Lagos, and was convicted on four charges in a consular court without legal representation. He was deported first within the Niger Coast Protectorate and later to the Gold Coast, returning home in 1906.

Early life and commercial rise

Nana was born Eriomala at Jakpa on the Benin River, probably in 1852. He was one of Olomu's younger sons; his mother, Memese, was an Urhobo woman from Evhro (modern Effurun). Olomu later founded Ebrohimi and became the leading Itsekiri merchant on the river. By the early 1870s Nana spoke English and acted as his father's deputy. In 1876 he represented Olomu before a British consul when the family was accused of killing prisoners taken during a conflict near Abraka.

Olomu died in 1883. Rather than dividing his commercial property among his children, he had arranged for Nana to inherit the trading organisation intact, an unusual succession among nineteenth-century Itsekiri merchant families. The inheritance included trading connections, canoes, weapons and a large enslaved workforce, as well as Olomu's commercial and political rivals.

Governor of the Benin River

Detailed histories by Ikime and Lloyd trace the office of Governor of the Benin River to a role that predated the intervention of British consul John Beecroft in 1851. Under an Olu, the governor had collected comey—duties paid by European ships—and supervised the ruler's commerce. After the death of Olu Akengbuwa in 1848 and the resulting interregnum, the office acquired wider executive importance, while British consuls increasingly sought to influence its selection and use its holder to regulate trade. In 1851 Beecroft helped secure Idiare's election to this altered office.

Olomu had held the governorship from 1879 until his death. More than a year later, Consul Edward Hewett asked the Itsekiri elders to choose a successor, and they selected Nana on 12 July 1884. He was the fourth holder of the reorganised governorship since Idiare's election in 1851. His selection departed from an observed pattern of alternating the office between the royal or Emaye group and the Ologbotsere group, to which Olomu's family belonged; Ikime attributed the departure to Nana's pre-eminence in wealth and power. Vice-Consul David Boyle Blair formally presented him with a staff of office on 6 May 1885.

On 16 July 1884, Nana and other leading Itsekiri men signed a treaty with Hewett that placed Itsekiriland under British protection. The signatories expressly deferred Articles VI and VII for later negotiation. Article VI would have allowed people of all countries to trade and establish premises throughout their territory, while Article VII concerned missionary access. The reservation of Article VI became central to the later dispute because British officials proceeded as though Nana had undertaken to permit free trade. Ikime also found no basis for later claims that the treaty placed Urhoboland, or the whole of what became Warri Province, under Nana's government.

The British and Itsekiri understandings of the governorship did not fully coincide. Hewett expected Nana to keep order and settle disputes at the inland markets, and Blair described him as the executive through whom consular decisions would be enforced. Itsekiri leaders, however, had elected him, and the office was also expected to defend their collective trading interests. These conflicting expectations later allowed commercial disputes to be treated as defiance of colonial authority.

Trade, slavery and regional power

Nana expanded the organisation he inherited along the Ethiope and Warri rivers. Senior enslaved agents and their assistants lived at waterside depots near Urhobo communities, where producers and local traders brought palm oil. Advances of imported goods, gifts to influential people, friendships and marriages helped secure supplies. Ikime's oral-history research found that Nana was remembered in several Urhobo communities as a reliable trader who paid for oil, even where memories of armed conflict with his family remained.

By 1894 Nana had acquired a near-monopoly in much of the trade, although contemporary estimates of the territory, personnel and canoes under his control varied widely and are not considered reliable. His organisation depended heavily on enslaved labour. Oral accounts collected by Ikime described coercion by Nana and his agents, including the seizure of people as security for debts, retaliatory raids and occasional abductions. The same accounts sometimes distinguished the conduct of agents from Nana's direct orders and recalled cases in which he punished an agent or paid compensation. Lloyd likewise concluded that some of Nana's representatives acted tyrannically, while cautioning that hostile rivals exaggerated allegations against him.

Nana also used closures of trade as a bargaining measure. In 1886, when the Liverpool price of palm oil had fallen sharply, he stopped sales to European firms in an attempt to obtain higher prices. Such stoppages had been used by earlier governors, but British consuls increasingly interpreted Nana's actions as obstruction of commerce. His growing monopoly also antagonised smaller European merchants and rival Itsekiri traders, particularly Dogho and Dudu.

Conflict with the British

In 1891 the British installed vice-consuls and a more direct administrative system in the Oil Rivers Protectorate. Officials regarded Nana's governorship as redundant and said that he was head only of his own family, although many Itsekiri continued to recognise him as their leader and he continued to use the title. British policy sought direct jurisdiction and access to the inland markets, while Nana continued to assert authority over trade. In April 1894, Consul-General Claude Maxwell MacDonald formally told him that he was no longer chief of the Itsekiri people.

The immediate crisis concerned complaints that Nana's men had stopped trade and seized Urhobo people. In June 1894 Acting Consul-General Ralph Moor ordered Nana to release captives held by his headman Ologun and to recall Ologun from Eku. Nana denied ordering any general obstruction of trade, said the captives were being held as security for an unpaid oil debt, and agreed to recall Ologun. Ologun was recalled, but Moor concluded that his instructions had not been fulfilled and blockaded Nana's trade on the Ethiope River.

Nana repeatedly declined summonses to the vice-consulate because he feared being seized and deported as Jaja of Opobo had been in 1887. On 2 August, in Nana's absence, other Itsekiri chiefs signed a new treaty that included the free-trade provisions omitted in 1884. Moor told Nana that he could sign only at the vice-consulate and ordered him to remove a defensive barrier across the creek leading to Ebrohimi. A British naval party destroyed the barrier on 3 August; shots were exchanged, and Moor treated the incident as the beginning of open war.

Ebrohimi expedition

The British blockaded Ebrohimi and burned settlements whose leaders they regarded as Nana's supporters. On 24 August an armoured steam cutter reconnoitring the creek came under fire, killing two members of its crew and seriously wounding three; Nana later maintained that the cutter had fired first. British forces attempted an advance five days later but were impeded by the terrain and Ebrohimi's defences. They then shelled the town while demanding Nana's unconditional surrender.

Ebrohimi was captured on 25 September 1894, but Nana and many followers escaped through the creeks. Moor declared him an outlaw and ordered his property forfeited. Nana reached Lagos and voluntarily surrendered to Governor Gilbert Carter on 30 October. Questions about whether the Niger Coast Protectorate had jurisdiction to arrest him in Lagos delayed his transfer, after which Nana agreed to return voluntarily to the protectorate to face trial.

Trial, exile and return

Nana asked to be tried in Lagos, where he had consulted lawyers. MacDonald instead convened a consular court at Old Calabar, beginning on 30 November 1894. MacDonald, a career soldier without legal training, presided without assessors; neither the prosecution nor Nana had legal representation, and the court heard no legal argument. The four charges concerned levying war and attempting to avoid the 1884 treaty, opposing consular officers, breaching the peace and inciting breaches of the peace.

The prosecution also introduced allegations of slave-raiding, decapitated bodies found near Ebrohimi and two executions carried out in the town, although Nana was charged with neither slave-raiding nor murder. He denied ordering slave raids or knowing of the decapitations, and argued that his armed resistance arose from fear of capture rather than a plan to make war on Britain. On 6 December MacDonald convicted him on all four counts without issuing a reasoned judgment, sentenced him to deportation for life, and confirmed the forfeiture of his property.

Foreign Office legal advisers subsequently doubted that the court had authority to impose deportation in the manner it had, but decided to let the matter stand and not publish the proceedings. Nana was first sent to the Upper Cross River. In 1896 he was transferred under a specially enacted Gold Coast ordinance to Christiansborg Castle in Accra.

After repeated petitions, Nana was allowed to return in August 1906. He settled at a place then called America, later known as Nana Town, near Koko. Visitors from both Itsekiri communities and Urhobo communities with which he had traded welcomed him. Between 1907 and 1910 he built a new residence, where he lived until his death on 3 July 1916.

Legacy and collections

Nana's personal flag, inscribed "NANNA", now held by the National Maritime Museum.

Nana is popularly commemorated in Nigeria as a precursor of anti-colonial resistance. Historical studies also place that resistance within the power structures of the nineteenth-century palm-oil trade: his commercial organisation combined extensive regional alliances with monopoly, armed coercion and enslaved labour.

His former residence houses the Nanna Living History Museum in Koko, which Ayida describes as holding the largest collection of his personal effects. The building was designated a national monument in 1990. The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds the largest known collection of Nana's objects outside Nigeria, including an ivory trophy, two flags and a boat gun seized during the 1894 expedition. Ayida has interpreted the hunter motif on one of the flags as a projection of Nana's authority as the head of a trading empire.

The Koko museum's board has sought the return of objects held in the United Kingdom. In 2025, Ayida argued that restitution should be accompanied by investment in the capacity of local museums rather than delayed on the ground that they lacked resources.

Further reading

• Hicks, Dan (2020). The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv18msmcr. ISBN 978-0-7453-4176-7.
• Ikime, Obaro (1968). Merchant Prince of the Niger Delta: The Rise and Fall of Nana Olomu, Last Governor of the Benin River. London: Heinemann Educational. ISBN 0-435-32466-7.