Jaja of Opobo

Jaja of Opobo (Jubo Jubogha; c. 1821–1891) was the founder and first king (amanyanabo) of the Opobo Kingdom, in present-day Rivers and Akwa Ibom states (Wikipedia). Of Igbo origin, he was brought to Bonny and ritually adopted into the Ijaw community. After his master's death he took charge of the trade of the Anna Pepple House, one of Bonny's merchant houses, and led it until a war with the Manilla Pepple House, led by Oko Jumbo, led him to break away and found Opobo, east of Bonny, in 1869.

Opobo became a leading centre of the palm-oil trade. Jaja barred European and African middlemen from the interior markets, and by 1870 was selling eight thousand tons of palm oil directly to the British.

In his youth Jaja was kidnapped from Igboland, possibly by the Aro confederacy, and sold into slavery in Bonny. He earned his way out of slavery after years of service to his master, and on his master's death took charge of his trade and rose to head the Anna Pepple House (Wikipedia).

He was later abducted aboard a British vessel, tried in Accra and exiled, first to London and then to Saint Vincent and Barbados in the West Indies. In 1891 he was allowed to return to Opobo but died on the way (Wikipedia).

Jaja shipped palm oil directly to Liverpool, sent his children to school in Glasgow, built a secular school in Opobo and barred missionaries from his kingdom. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 Opobo was assigned to Britain, and when Jaja refused to stop taxing British traders, the vice-consul Henry Hamilton Johnston invited him to negotiations in 1887, at which he was seized. After his exile and death the power of Opobo declined quickly. A memorial to him was erected in the centre of Opobo town in 1903 (Wikipedia). His son, Prince Waribo, was sent to school at Frodsham in Cheshire, England, where he died in 1882, aged 13 or 14; his grave is in the churchyard of St Laurence's Church.