Nana Olomu

Nana Olomu (born Eriomala; c. 1852 – 3 July 1916) was an Itsekiri palm-oil merchant and political leader in the western Niger Delta (Wikipedia). He inherited the large trading organisation of his father, Olomu, and in 1884 was chosen by Itsekiri elders as Governor of the Benin River, an office that combined commercial and political authority while the Warri kingship was vacant. By the early 1890s his organisation controlled much of the trade between European firms on the lower Benin River and the Urhobo palm-oil producers inland, through commercial alliances and credit as well as armed canoes, agents and enslaved labour.

Nana was born at Jakpa on the Benin River, probably in 1852, one of the younger sons of Olomu, who founded Ebrohimi and became the leading Itsekiri merchant on the river; his mother, Memese, was an Urhobo woman from Evhro (Effurun). By the early 1870s he spoke English and acted as his father's deputy. When Olomu died in 1883 he arranged, unusually, for Nana to inherit the trading organisation intact, with its connections, canoes, weapons and large enslaved workforce (Wikipedia).

British officials at first endorsed his authority but, after setting up a more direct administration in 1891, treated his office as obsolete and sought to open the hinterland to direct trade. The dispute ended with the British blockade and bombardment of his fortified town of Ebrohimi in 1894. Nana escaped, surrendered 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 then to the Gold Coast, and returned home in 1906 (Wikipedia).

Nana is popularly remembered in Nigeria as a forerunner of anti-colonial resistance, while historians also place his resistance within the power structures of the palm-oil trade, in which his organisation combined regional alliances with monopoly, armed coercion and enslaved labour (Wikipedia). His former residence at Koko houses the Nanna Living History Museum and was declared a national monument in 1990; objects seized in 1894 are held by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.