THE
LAGACY OF SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION
As
we are probably aware that the year 2007 was the 200th anniversary
of the beginning of abolition of the horrendous Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the
British parliament having passed the Abolition act in 1807. Several programs
were designed by various bodies and organizations to eradicate the various
‘phases’ of the illegitimate trade. However, it was controversial historical
event for instance, on August 8-12-2007, the Omohundro Institute of early
American history and culture, in cooperation with UNESCO, the Gilder Lehrman
Institute of American history, the Gilder
Lehrman center for the study of slavery, Resistance and Abolition.
According to Dr. Nwankwo Uchenna Martins,
W.E.B Du Bios institute for African and American Research, the Reed foundation
Inc. and the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation,
convened a major international conference in Ghana. With its theme as “the
bloody writing is forever torn.” Domestic and International consequences of the
first governmental efforts to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, the aim of the
meeting was to examine the national and international contacts of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade at the end of the eighteenth century. The
circumstances that led to decisions by some of the trade’s original instigators
and greatest beneficiaries to outlaw participation in it, and the social,
political, economic and cultural consequences for all the inhabitants (slave and free) of the kingdoms and nations
involved, of actions that ultimately abolished the pillars of Atlantic
commerce.
Though presentations made at the
conference affirmed the claim that Africa occupies the central place in doleful
drama of the slave trade, many argue against the conference theme and insisted
that the body writing is in reality, yet to be truly informed. The presense of
this bloody writing, in Nigeria, nay Africa can only connote slavery. When
slavery is understood as a system of legalized domination and exploitation,
there will be no gain saying that the writing is still bloody irrespective of
whether there are still physical movement in human conditions, of Africans as
cartels across the Atlantic or not.
Today the extremely bloody phase of the trade in the new world where Africans
lost their flesh, blood, sweat and tears as could be seen in the various forms
of dehumanizing brutalization of the slaves on plantations and mines, followed
by the lynching and the Jim Crow laws. But in Africa there has been hardly any
significant positive change since the formal abolition, some two hundred years
ago. In essence, it is not yet uhuru, to
adopt the statement of the famous Kenyan opposition politician.
It has become fashionable among unwary
historians to present a stereotype continental impact and legacy of the
Atlantic slave trade. It is obviously unwise to do so. It is rather instructive
that we exercise caution against constructing a theoretical modeling that
generalize using a single experience. Africa today is one continent only in the
physical geographical sense of space. It is, in reality, a continent in
microcosm in the sense of its freedom from domination and exploitation, in the
standard of living of its people and in the physical and social security of its
people, it is against this background and in recognition of the peculiarities
of Nigeria that we make her our case study as we stimulate ourselves into deep
reflection on the twin issues of slave trade and slavery as historical and
current realities. It is not debatable that in Nigeria, the sky is yet to be
cleared of the odious vapor of slave trade and slavery. We can argue on the
contrary.
Before we look at ourselves as “free
people, in the 21th century, it is necessary that we go back to history in
order to understand where we are going. To this end we begin by looking briefly
at the origin and character of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery.
EARLY BEGINNING AND THE
CHARACTER OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY
There are several accounts of how the
trans-Atlantic trade began. A common index to the various accounts is that
events in Europe and the Americas, especially from 1492 when Christopher
Columbus discovered the new world led to the invasion of Nigeria by the slavers
principal among these were the labour demand for nearly all aspects of the
European colonizing enterprise in the America and the Caribbean plantation agriculture,
mining, soldering artisanship, domestic service and so on. The new world had
abundant land and enormous natural resources that promised great fortunes and
fabulous wealth to Europeans who had capital to invest in the area. With the
availability of land and capital, labour became the only handicap that caused
European investors and other owners of capital sleepless nights.
A remedial solution aimed at overcoming
this hurdle led to the enslavement of the indigenous Amerindians. The
enslavement of the Indians created more problem than it solved and the Indians
reacted with hostility to the kind of race relations in which they were
enslaved to enhance the economic interest of strangers to their land. This
aggravated their anger over the European takeover and control of their natural
resource. Capitalistic motivation was incomprehensible to the Indians and the
idea of working very hard to amass a great deal of wealth was absurd to their
sensibility.
Worse than the above, the Indians had no
natural resistance to old world diseases (the common cold measles, and small
pox), which brought a near unbelievable mortality in the area. Jeannette
Gaffney states that the Indian population of two and half million in 1500 was
decimated by 50% immediately after the initial contact. The death toll suffered
by the Indians pitched the European capitalists and missionaries against themselves
and moved by the agony of the Indians, Bishop of Las Casas of Spain suggested
the use of Negroes, who were thought to be more sturdy and able to withstand
the old world diseases which the Indians lacked immunity against.
Thus, African labour was unanimously
accepted as the solution to the failed attempt to use either the European
indentured servants, (who were still protected by the common law traditions of
the new world, the advantage of using African labour were counted without any
feeling of guilt because of the belief that the negro is a separate and
distinct species of the genus entered the ark”. The Negro was therefore a thing
and a savage creature unknown to the frame work of the society.
It was soon discovered that slaves could
be obtained quite close at hand in the rivers of the Niger-delta and it became
a regular practice for slave dealers to enter this rivers frequently in search
of slaves before long, the whole coastal region acquired in Portuguese charts
and document the name of ‘five slave rivers’ from about the middle of the 16th
century, English, Dutch, Spanish, and even Swedish merchants scrambled with the
Portuguese for slaves in Nigeria to supply the labour needed in their sugar
colonies in the Caribbean. Almost immediately the volume of slave pulled out of
Nigeria increased dramatically in response to the dictates of capitalists who
saw the African labour as a major factor in the realization of the much
expected windfall in the Americas. Once
it took off, the slave trade in Nigeria grew astronomically and over shadowed
all other commercial activities.
In the sixteenth century for instance,
1,000,000 slaves were transported to the Americas, in the seventeenth century
some 3,000,000, and in the eighteenth century some 7,000,000 of these a
conservative estimate puts the number shipped annually from Nigerian ports at
22,000 000.
Though
our concern in this discourse is not to relocate the brutal, dehumanizing and
excruciating experiences of the African slaves whose labour went uncompensated,
we should in passing re-echo Okon E.Uya’s assertion punctuated not infrequently
by poor food, poor medical attention, the last and intimate separations etc.
Uya argues further that it was indeed a most agonizing experience for the
slaves and the Affirms Gow F Hegel verdict that black slavery was for the
enslaved blacks, a trial by death.
Although voices in opposition to the
commercialization and commoditization of blacks had been raised in the
sixteenth century, it was not within the 1780’s that a correlation of
humanitarian, economic, and ideological force combined with the determined
resistance of those in slavery to challenge it’s legitimacy. Acknowledging the
inherent evil of this parasite and the rising struggle against bondage, such as
that mounted in Haiti between 1793 and 1804, the governments of several
trans-Atlantic world nations Initiated policies between 1787 and 1807, to make
participation in the trade illegal.
In Britain for instance, the debate in parliament
following the Zong Case made several parliamentarians to have a second thought
of the voice of people like Granville sharp, Ulaudah Equiano, Thomas Clarkson
and William Wilberforce which their sixteen parliamentary sessions from 1690 to
1714 ignored the question that sought for consideration from the houses of
commons on 10th June 1806 and the house of lords on 24th
June 1806, following a resolution moved in both houses by Mr. Charles fox and
Lord Granville was.
That conceiving the African slave trade
to be contrary to the principles of Justice, humanity, and sound policy this
house will all practicable expedition, take measures to abolish it in such
manner, and at such time, as shall be thought advisable.
The motion for the abolition of the slave
trade (which was seen by most parliamentarians in the opening year of the 19th
century as “a gigantic evil”) was moved by Fox as follows, the time it is to be
hoped, is now not far distant, when Africa will be relieved from the
oppression, degradation, and misery of this impious commence, when arresting the
progress of that system of fraud, treachery and violence, which converts a
large part of the habitable globe into a field of warfare and desolated this
nation shall begin to atone the Negro race for the accumulated wrong.
By 1807, a conjunction of factors, which
to borrow Pettigrew’s words had both political aspects and economic rationales,
conduced to the abolition of the gigantic evil trade by the British parliament
in 1807, it became illegal for British subjects to engage in the slave trade,
and in 1833 the institution of slavery was abolished in all British imperial
possessions. Thereafter, Britain through sustained diplomatic pressure ensured
the passage of anti-slavery legislations by other nations in Europe and the
Americas. Apart from diplomacy, Britain also employed outright coercion to get
other European nations to do its biddings. The fore going attests to the fact
that trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery existed for over four hundred years
and it is now over two hundred years since it was outlawed. Looking at the
present realities in Nigeria, would we be right to describe slavery as a mere
historical phenomenon? For now we turn attention to the main course of the
paper reflections on the legacy of slave trade and slavery in Nigeria.
IMPACT OF TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE ON NIGERIA
The legacy of slave trade and slavery in
Nigeria, the foregoing brings us to the question of the legacy of the Atlantic
slave trade and slavery in Nigeria, no matter how abolition was achieved.
Whether by diplomacy or by direct coercion in order to grasp the point we are
going to make known in this segment of the discussion, it is important to
always remember that the Atlantic slave trade had brought into being an
economic umbilical cord that linked Nigeria to Europe or indeed to what today
is known as the west. Afigbo gives us an excellent description of what we refer
to here as umbilical cord. According to him in the cosmos of natural existence,
an umbilical cord is a device by means of which an undeveloped or developing
entity is fed by the fully developed or at any rate by a more fully developed
partner. But in the man-made Cosmos of socio-cultural relationships an umbilical
cord is a device by means of which the undeveloped feed the more fully
developed.
In the case under discussion, an
umbilical cord is more or less a device by means the fully industrialized and
developing nations of Europe and the New World were fed by Nigeria. Available
evidence shows that abolition did nothing to redress this situation in favour
of Nigeria. Indeed it made the situation worse for her. The contradictions in
Europe that facilitated the abolition of the slave trade and instituted
colonialization hitched Nigeria and its resources more securely for the West.
The argument that the attitude of western
economic imperialist have continued to prevail becomes clearer to us when we realize
that it is still dominated by the descendants of the slave owners. We read in
Okon E. Uya’s Contemporary Issues on Slavery and the Black World that, black
slavery in America was first and foremost, an economic system in which the
master, usually white, either personally or through his agents, tried to
maximally exploit the labour of the slave for his economic benefits and well
being.
According to Uya who argues further, one
of the starting legacies of black slavery was that the black were by and large
excluded from enjoying the benefits of the fruits of their labour.”
In essence, slave trade and slavery evoke
memories of ugly experiences of exploitation. A study of the modern world
cannot be separated from the birth growth and coming to maturity of the
capitalist system which rose to it’s height on the basis of raw materials
produced by the southern plantation system. Though the 1087 proclamation was to
end the master slave relationship, the western ties with Nigeria have remained
that of the exploiter and the exploited, the predator and the prey, the hunter
and the hunted, the rich and the poor, the oppressor and the oppressed, and
relents, the globalize and the globalized.
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth
century slave trade and slavery were used as instruments of domination and
exploitation after the abolition, the launching of colonialism played the same
role and presently neo-colonialism, especially as could be seen in
globalization is furthering the exploitation of the people and resources of
Nigeria where the abundance of oil deposits is a curse rather than a blessing.
The situation in Nigeria is reminiscent of what was in Gabon when monsieur Mba
(former president of Gabon assured his erstwhile French masters that nothing
had changed. Slavery and colonization have remained raw in their new
incarnation under globalization. The expectations of the 1950s that discovery
of crude oil deposits in the Niger delta region of Nigeria would transform the
country into one of the most developed places in the world, and its people into
the best-sheltered, best-fed, best-clothed, best-educated and most-fulfilled in
the world have been frustrated by the attitude of profit-conscious
multi-national corporations. Nigerians continue to live in pristine conditions
in the absence of social amenities reminiscent of the slave experience in the
Americas. The West which
prefers to feed its cats and dogs better than Nigeria cannot claim that the
“bloody writing” is forever torn. There is an alarming rate of impoverishment
of Nigeria resulting from the policies of economic globalization - which to a
large extent represents the closest cousin of the slave trade and slavery,
which as international enterprises locked Africa, Europe and the Americas into
unbroken global network in which Nigeria has remained bankrupt; a paradoxical
position as one among the world’s poorest nations despite her wealth in human
and natural resources.
In
the same, there are still Nigerians who are playing the role of the middlemen
in the slave trade. The descendants of slave owners plundered our resources in
collaboration with some treacherous sons and daughter of Nigeria who are
modern-day reincarnation of King People of Bonny who sold ten men for every box
of matches and mortgaged their future for bottles of whisky. We see similar
greed in Egbo young Eyamba, a Calabar Chief and slave trader who threatened to
kill Mr. Henry Nicholas in old Calabar it was from abolitionist William
Wilberforce. Another case of a Nigerian who used his political power to enslave
his subjects just like our leaders today is Ibrahim Nagwarnatse, son of the
founder of the small kingdom of the Kontagora in the present Niger State who
when he was captured by the British and asked to renounce the slave trade
taunted “can you stop a cat from mowing? I shall die with a slave in my mouth”
even as his community was delimited by slavery and slave trading.
Again,
the issue of brain drain stare us unblinkingly in the face and we struggle in
vain to differentiate it from the forced migrations of the slave trade era. The
West has continued to pull out the best of our population. History teaches that
European slave dealers bought only the vibrant young men and women, depriving
Nigeria of the healthiest stock or engine of change of it’s society. A.F.C.
Ryder asserts, “A slave trader would never buy a child below the age of puberty
nor an adult who was old or showed any physical defect”. Today there is a seismic migration of human
assets including many of the most authoritative scholars from Nigerian
universities and colleges to North American and European institutions. Those
left behind teach in universities buffeted by unprecedented crises of
underfunding, and are compelled to work in an environment of severe
deprivation, of strains and stresses, of disappointed hopes and of uncertain
future. A look at Okon E. Uya”s graphic
profile of Nigerian professionals in diaspora commonly leads to lamentations
for our beloved country. Estimates, according to Uya, put Nigerians in the U S
A alone at 1.1 million with specialization in such fields as medicine,
education, teachings research and development, information technology,
engineering and so on. It is not only to be regretted that financial, technical
and intellectual expertise which can improve our fortunes as a people abound in
the diasporas, but also that many are still ready to get back the country once
presented with the opportunity. The current pain , discomfort and economic
hardships faced by Nigerians have no one in doubt that if a slave ship would
anchor on the Atlantic shore today, many people would volunteer to jump into it,
only to be taken to the west, where at least African-Americans are living in
conditions that could only be dreamed of by their African counter-parts. Thus,
we may not condemn Keith Robbins for provocatively stating that he was glad
that his ancestors were sold into slavery so that he could escape the violence
and devastation that plague the African continent today. In another vein there
was the oppressive racist plan and tendency to marginalize African cultures in
all societies of the new world or to reduce the slave to a cultural zero. At
any rate however, available evidence indicates that despite the brutalization,
cruelties, oppression, social dislocation and human degradation, Africans in
the new world gallantly checkmated a harsh plan of cultural extermination. Can
this be said of those of us who were not born and have since being lived in
Nigeria? It is common knowledge that the
cultures of Nigeria have been adulterated and no serious effort is made to
revive our cultural values. According to Dr. Uzowunn in his book argued
elsewhere, a nation that submits its culture to foreign dictate should be
prepared for foreign humiliation misrepresentation and ridicule. The conviction
is that the fate of a victim of cultural imperialism will continue to be
decided from outside and in this way its progress can be retarded. Cultural
imperialism creates consumer rather than producer societies and this is what
defined Nigeria’s relationship with the west during the slave trade and other
subsequent economic arrangements. Nigeria has since about the sixteenth century
been relegated to the position of a supplier of industrial raw materials while
the west occupies the commanding heights of manufacturing and technology by the
British parliament.
Our mental make-up been brainwashed to
believe that only European names can open the gate of heaven for us. Most Nigerians have a disdainful attitude to
indigenous names and regard those who exhibit emotional attachment of our
cultural values as barbaric and uncivilized.
The irony is that slaves who were forcefully removed from their cultural
setting resisted the replacement of their names. In all his adult life, Olaudah Equiano (c.
1745 1797) consistently referred to himself as Gustavo Vassa, the African. The Anglo-African
John Stewart used an African name Ottabah Ugoano (c. 1757 – 1803) in total
rejection of the English names which most of us have should have been
considered as a status symbol signifying that one has crossed the border from
barbarism to civilization irrespective of what we consider ourselves to be free
or slave the truth is that the mind and spirit of Nigerians have been enslaved.
Little surprising why Thomas Kamza insists in his book, Evolution and Revolution
Africa, that the longed African revolution must, when and if it comes, be the
re-conquest of the right to think. While slavery in its four hundred years of
existence tried, through with little or no success to de-culture only Nigeria
who made it successful to the American today. Most Nigerians who have not even
gone across the shores of Nigeria have allowed their cultural heritage to be eclipsed
by foreign influences
SUMMARY
What
we have done in this necessarily sketches historical meditation is to establish
a link between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery and the current
happening in Nigeria. It is clear from our analysis that while white people are
still enjoying economic and social principles that have their roots in slavery,
Nigerians continue to live an extremely difficult life. This confusion we find
ourselves in is rooted in the distant past. The enormous natural resources of
the new world were profitably exploited using enslaved Africans. The early
nineteenth century decisions concerning the slave trade did not alter the
fundamental features of the relationship between Nigeria and the west a relationship
that is replete of features of exploitation and domination. Present day
Nigerians are simply the miserable children of unfortunate parents. Slavery
continues to exist and it is left for us to follow the example of our heroic
ancestors and make our enslavement unfortunately dangerous and unprofitable to
our slavers, be they white or black.
Slaving has not changed in any
appreciable degree since the emancipation of the Atlantic slaves. The
fundamental difference between us is that the slaves of the south plantation
system stopped at nothing in their guest for freedom, our generation has become
too weak, and unable to challenge those who enslave us in our own homeland. One
of the greatest lessons to be learnt from emancipation and abolition of slavery
is that black slaves despite the bottlenecks on the way to freedom, did not
resign themselves to fate. This should be the ultimate legacy of slavery for us
as we confront the challenges of the 21st century. After all,
slavery’s history is not only one of exploitation and domination, it is also a
story of struggle against these evils, and of battles won after many setbacks
and much sufferings.
NAJOMBONG
ETIM OBONGHA
HISTORY
AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
IMO
STATE UNIVERSITY
OWERRI,
NIGERIA.
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