Every ship docking in Lagos had to pay 7.4 slaves (equivalent to 126 ounces of gold) to the palace. When dealing with non-royal merchants like Madam Tinubu, the tax was 9.65 slaves. Shippers only dealt with non-royal merchants when the palace had exhausted its stock and the shippers were either in a hurry to visit other West African ports or head back to sea. If they were not in a hurry, the palace’s supply chain brought fresh supplies from a newly invaded village in the hinterland or round up other people’s families working on farms, or capture women and children in a distant market. No one enslaved their own. Oba Kosoko, for instance, mistakenly sold an acquaintance of an acquaintance. Realising the abomination, he quickly sent a prohibition order to his business partner, Joaquim Lopes Pereira in Brazil. Pereira replied in a letter dated November 5th, 1850: “…as to the one which you told me to write about that he should not be sold, it was unfortunate that when the letter arrived he had been already sold out of the country; he could not therefore be reserved for the instruction which you finally gave.”

The damage this traditional rulers did to the continent sef...hard to defend