Introduction

The ancient Benin Kingdom, one of the most famous kingdoms of pre-colonial West Africa, had

been in intimate contact with European civilization since 1472, when Ruy de Sequiera led a

Portuguese official delegation to the court of the Oba to negotiate treaties of friendship and trade.

Thereafter, and for the next five hundred and twenty years, the Benin monarchy maintained

cordial, friendly and mutually profitable relations with its European counterparts. In the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, these contacts blossomed into intense cultural relations, with the

Portuguese exchanging ambassadors with the Benin Royal Court and there were serious efforts

to establish Christianity in the Benin Kingdom. Many Benin princes were educated in Europe

and trade between Benin and the Europeans flourished until the seventeenth century, when the

Atlantic slave trade became the dominant interest in European trade relations with West Africa.

Naturally, the type of trade which emphasized the buying and selling of the producer, rather than

his product, could not but be intensely disruptive of normal interrelations between European and

their African trading partners. Trade berween equal trading partners based on mutual respect,

gave way to trade between man-hunters and their victims, based on violence and bloodshed.

Fortunately for Africa and Europe, the slave trade had fallen out of favour by the early 19th

century following the abolition of the Trade by the British Parliament in 1807. Thereafter, the

British government, deploying the Royal Navy in West African waters, made strenuous efforts to

stamp out this trade which Britain had dominated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It

was in the course of stamping out the slave trade and substituting it with a more legitimate forum

of convenience in agricultural and industrial raw materials more in tune with the needs of

industrial Europe, that Britain found it necessary to establish a physical administrative presence
in West Africa, starting with Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Lagos and Fernando Po

(now Equitorial Guinea). The British government established a consulate at Fernando Po in

1849, and from this base, began gradually to occupy and administer portions of the Nigerian

Coast. Lagos was occupied in 1861, Calabar in 1872 when the consulate was transferred from

Fernando Po to Calabar, and Lokoja consulate was established in 1865. From these outposts the

British government gradually commenced the conquest, occupation, and colonization of Nigeria,

a process which gathered immense momentum following the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, at

which it was agreed that any European power claiming preponderant influence in any part of

Africa, must establish effective occupation of such a territory. This decision of the Berlin West

Africa conference spelt the doom of African independent monarchies, and heralded the age of

aggressive imperialism.

Even before the age of Berlin, the Benin monarchy had watched helplessly as the British

government annexed the Benin outpost of Lagos, and made it a British colony in 1861. in 1885,

Britain proclaimed the existence of an Oil Rivers Protectorate over the entire coastal areas of

Southern Nigeria East of Lagos, and embracing the coastal areas of the Benin Kingdom,

including the Benin port of Ughoton. In 1894, following a minor trade dispute a British force

occupied the territory of Ebrohemie, and deported the paramount chief of the Itsekiri, Chief Nana

Olomu, the nearest trading partners of the Benin Kingdom. Further east at Opobo in the Niger

Delta, the trading chief, King Jaja, was kidnapped and deported to Barbados in 1884. He was

brought back to his kingdom, a corpse, for burial in October 1891. The Benin Monarch could not

have been oblivious of these ominous developments, especially as similar efforts at occupation

and conquest were being made by the British from their inland base of Lokoja from where they

extended their presence to Asaba and Onitsha which were important Eastern outposts of the
Benin Kingdom. Since 1862, British efforts to persuade the Benin Monarch to sign a treaty of

protection which would give the British government some legal basis for assuming control over

Benin affairs had been rejected by the Benin authorities. However, in 1892, Henry Galway, the

British Vice-Consul appointed to administer the Benin districts of the Oil Rivers (then Niger

Coast) Protectorate, visited Benin and was able to persuade Oba Ovonramwen to sign a treaty of

protection with Britain. This treaty contained the usual clauses committing the Benin Kingdom

to throw open their country to free trade. Oba Ovonramwen, as his cognomen "Nogbaisi"

(meaning "The Enlightened") implied, was fully conversant with the thrust of international

politics in his era, and was aware of the might of the British government. He was aware that his

Ijebu neighbours to the West had been militarily subjugated in 1862, and later, his Itsekini and

Urhobo trading partners had been subjugated in 1894. He did not therefore wish for military

confrontation with British imperial power. He believed that through skilful diplomacy and

negotiations, the Benin Kingdom could reach an accommodation with the British to enable him

preserve the independence and autonomy of his kingdom. He therefore persisted with the old

mercantilist policy of making all external trade with his kingdom, a royal monopoly to be

exercised by duly appointed agents of the Benin Court. In 1896/97, the trade agent of the Benin

Royal Court in charge of trade with the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, and the British traders at the Coast

was Chief Obaseki. It was therefore his unfortunate lot to mediate the delicate relations between

Benin and the British in these volatile times. The British government would not countenance the

obstacles to trade imposed by the Benin Royal Court. So, in December 1896, Consul Galway

being away on leave, his overzealous deputy, Vice-Consul Phillips, decided to provoke a

confrontation with the Benin Monarchy over the free trade issue, in order to use it as a pretext to

conquer and occupy the Benin Kingdom. In December 1896, he sought permission to visit the
Benin Kingdom to discuss matters of trade. The Oba's emissaries brought back the response that

the Oba was temporarily unable to receive any strangers in his court, as he was engaged in the

annual rituals of the great Ague festival, during which the Binis rededicated themselves

spiritually to their king, and no non-Bini man or woman was welcomed in the kingdom at that

time. Consul Phillips suspected that such rituals included human sacrifices, and therefore on

January 2, 1897, he decided to proceed to Benin in defiance of the warning of the Benin Royal

Court. His party, comprising a total of nine Europeans, including the commandant of the Niger

Coast Protectorate Constabulary Force, and accompanied by an escort of 240 carriers, were met

by the Oba's emissary, Chief Ologbosere, on January 4, and advised to turn back as they would

not be welcome at that particular time. He ignored the warning and proceeded at his peril. In the

ensuing military confrontation, Consul Phillips' party which was well armed, was successfully

ambushed by Benin warriors. Acting Consul Phillips lost his life, along with six other English

men, and more than 200 of their African companions; they were routed at the end of a day-long

battle, involving the extensive use of firearms by the British. This military confrontation was

widely reported in the British press at the time as "the Benin Massacre" and there were loud

jingoistic public demands for appropriate reprisals. On February 10, 1897, the British

government assembled a large punitive expedition made up of 1,500 soldiers and naval

personnel, drawn from the Mediterranean Fleet, the West Indian Troops, as well as troops from

the Gold Coast and Lagos, and thousands of local friends, and invaded the Benin Kingdom. This

force was commanded by a Rear-Admiral of the Royal Navy. It was like killing a fly with a

hammer. Benin City was sacked and thoroughly looted, and the British carried off more than

2,500 priceless treasures from the Benin Court, made up of priceless works of art in bronze and

ivory, and relics of over 1,000 years of Benin Civilization. They were sold to art connoisseurs in
Europe to defray the costs of the expedition. Oba Ovonramwen escaped into the bush with his

chiefs, and continued the resistance until August 7, 1897, when he gave himself up, voluntarily.

In sacking the city in February 1897, the British had allowed their troops to loot Benin and the

city was burnt for seven days. Following the surrender of Oba Ovonramwen, his trial

commenced on September 1, 1897 with sir Ralph moor, the High Commissioner and Consul-

General of the Protectorate as accuser, judge and jury. The Oba was convicted along with seven

of his chiefs. He was deported to Calabar where he died in 1914. Seven of his chiefs tried with

him were publicly executed. The British government appointed an Acting Resident to govern

Benin, with the active advice of Chief Obaseki who, in return for collaborating with the British

forces, was appointed "Native Political Agent" in Benin. The Benin Monarchy was restored in

1914 when, following the death of the Oba in exile, his son was installed on his throne as Oba

Eweka II in 1914. Throughout these proceedings, the Oba comported himself with immense

dignity, and at no time did he bow before the British crown, or any of its representatives. In

presenting this beautiful play, The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen, a certain amount of poetic license

is inevitable. However, the author, Ahmed Yerima, has succeeded in capturing the dignity and

cultural glamour of the Benin Royal Court, as we see a distinguished and venerable monarch

coping with the best strategies he could muster, to confront the aggressive imperialism which

terminated, ultimately, the sovereign independence of traditional African kingdoms in the late

19th century.