Oba Ovonramwen

Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi was the last independent ruler of the Benin Kingdom, reigning from 1888 until the British invasion in 1897.

Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, also known as "Overami", was born around 1857 as the son of Oba Adolo, a prominent ruler of the Benin Kingdom in present-day Edo State, Nigeria. He grew up in the royal palace, where he was trained in governance, cultural customs, spiritual duties, and the expectations of kingship, preparing him to lead both politically and spiritually. At his coronation in 1888, he took the name Ovọnramwẹn Nọgbaisi, meaning "The Rising Sun which spreads over all".

Many west African ports had grown up around settlements originally established as slave markets. In the later 1800s, the British worked to replace the transatlantic slave trade with what became known as the ‘legitimate trade’ in palm oil. The mechanisation of the textile industry in Manchester and the spread of railways increased demand for palm oil as a lubricant and it was also used in soap.

The Oba of Benin controlled his country's main export of palm oil. In 1893, the British Niger Coast Protectorate was formed, intent on gaining the monopoly of this trade. However, in 1896 the Oba closed all markets to outside trade. The acting British consul-general, Lieutenant James Robert Phillips, decided to deal with the problem. In January 1897, he marched into Benin city with an apparently unarmed group of men.

Despite repeated requests for them to retreat, the British party continued, resulting in military action from the Oba in which all but two of the party were killed. In response, the British organised a punitive raid on the city, sending in 1,500 troops. Several hundred sculptural bronzes, known collectively as the Benin bronzes, were taken as reparation for the killing of Phillips and his men. Many of these are now in private collections and museums around the world. Benin City was captured in February 1897, and Ovonramwen eventually surrendered in August of that year.

Oba Ovonramwen was exiled to Calabar by the British where he lived until his death in January 1914.

 

This photograph of him with armed guards was said to have been taken on a yacht on his way into his exile at Calabar. The photograph once belonged to Tom Singleton Gardner, an agent for the British trading company, The Africa Association Ltd, who lived in New Calabar, southern Nigeria, from around 1890 to 1917. Tom Singleton Gardner died in 1917 from tuberculosis. We know little about what sort of man he was or about his time in west Africa; his diaries are lost. However, photographs such as this, which now belong to his family, provide us with a glimpse of what life was like in west Africa at this time. Although it is possible that Gardner himself took some of these photographs, most are attributed to the black African photographer JA Green, whose studio was in Bonny.

This information was provided by curators from The Whitworth Art Gallery.

Other African monarchs who were exiled by the British:
King Nana Prempeh I (Ashanti Kingdom, Ghana): The British arrested the Asantehene in 1896 and sent him to the Seychelles.
King Cetshwayo (Zulu Kingdom, South Africa): He led the Zulu nation during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. After his defeat and capture, the British sent him into exile.

In 1898, Kabaka Mwanga II of the Kingdom of Buganda (Buganda Kingdom, Uganda), joined forces with Omukama Kabalega, the ruler of Bunyoro (Bunyoro Kingdom, Uganda), who had already been waging a fierce, long-running war against British imperial expansion. The two monarchs led fierce, armed military resistance against British imperial expansion and the imposition of colonial rule over their kingdoms. British forces, aided by local collaborators, captured both kings on April 9, 1899. Fearing ongoing military loyalties and planned rescue operations by forces like Bunyoro's Abarusuura, the British decided to exile the two Kings to a far away land, the Seychelles. Mwanga died in the Seychelles in 1903, while Kabalega died 23 years later while returning to his kingdom after his release.

King Jaja of Opobo (Opobo Kingdom, Nigeria): He was exiled to the West Indies in 1887 after being tricked and arrested by British Consul Harry Johnston on a warship. Jaja died on the way home to Opobo after being granted permission to return and was buried initially on the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

British colonial authorities routinely used exile, banishment, and forced displacement as strategic political weapons to suppress resistance and neutralise anti-colonial leadership. By exiling key nationalist figures, monarchs, and religious leaders, the British aimed to leave resistance movements leaderless and disoriented. British administrators masked the violence of forced banishment behind administrative terms like "deportation", "relocation", or "administrative detention". New laws and emergency ordinances were regularly drafted ad-hoc to provide a veneer of legality to what was fundamentally a tool of coercive political control.

Source