₦airaland Forum

theoldpretender:
If your great grandad had been caught as a slave...God forbid

1.You might have not existed because he would have died in the ship enroute to the Americas.

2.Most slaves ended up in what is now South America. Millions did end up in North America.

3.If your grandad ended up in South America...chances are you would be living in a favella...where life is just as cheap as it is in Nigeria (Police brutality, violent drug gangs, etc).

4.If your grandad ended up in US or Canada....good. You have a high chance of living in a violent, drug ridden, gang ridden neighbourhood. And most blacks are victims of crime...commited by other blacks.

5.There is also a chance you might end up living in a higher level of life...if your ancestor got educated...or played sports brilliantly..

6.Is it worth allowing your ancestors suffer years of discrimination, often violent, just so that you can call yourself an American.

7. Black slaves were never sent to Australia. (The black Australian or Aboriginie is the original owner of that land. There are Africans there...but those are recent legal immigrants. Plus, Australia had a No Black Immigrant policy till 1968).

8. ThaNK God your ancestors were not sent to Argentina...to be used as cannon fodder in the wars of independence that wracked Argentina in the 19th century. Most blacks died in those wars...that, and massive whites only immigration, is why Argentina has less than 100000 black people.(once upon a time it was half the populaiton).

bros no harm in trying.... I'm pretty sure if such opportunity presented it right now many people even you will gladly accept the offer... buhari has made life horrible in Nigeria

@. Adaobi Tricia N. Thank you for sharing this gory past of our ancestors. Mine also was deeply involved. We gave massive land to the slave masters! John holt, liver brothers company. For slave and palm oil trade. We will follow your family foot step to ask forgiveness, mercy and grace through our lord jesus christ. Thank you.

baby124:
Lack of creative ability led her to write this nonsense in the New Yorker. Yes, there were instances like this. But involvement of foreigners fueled transatlantic slave trade. Many many cultures in the world buried their dead with slaves. Even South America had slaves who were buried with monarchs and they did a lot of head hunting. So don’t go on New Yorker to write patronizing articles which in the long run racists are looking for to justify their actions and absolve their ancestors who preyed on old practices guided by rules.

Whites injected materialism into the process and made it absolutely foul. Africans never ever treated their slaves like animals till the whites taught them how to treat their slaves like animals. Those heavy chains and weapons of torture were not forged by Africans but by White people. Slaves were like indentured servants who reintegrated into society mostly. Most of the slaves captured when the greed got High were regular people trying to go about their daily lives! Also the Africans did not have an idea of the fate that was meted out to the salves sold. It was absolutely horrendous and most of them died in transit. Had they known, things may just have been different.

I like people like you! Yes racism is justified!

You don't beg or force people to respect you! Government cannot legislate love!

The day black Africa, Nigeria, Ghana,... etc of their own accord, achieve economic and technological greatness and superiority over other countries! That day, racism as you callously know it will end!

Success has many fathers, a failure has no relations!

Blacks must stand up and take full responsibility for their situation as a people! Nobody owes them anything... respect, fairness, explanations, anything!

Too bad.
The worst aspect is that those sold as slaves are still poo

Fear Igbo. Them dey sell anything

thesicilian:
Inferiority complex makes you blame yourself even for crimes perpetrated against you by those you feel are superior to you. Did the Africans ever have any choice on the matter of slave trade? Agreed some of our ancestors took an ungodly advantage of the situation, selling out their own kin for personal gains, but what happened to those who tried to resist the British and Portuguese exploitation like King Jaja of Opobo and Oba Ovonramwen of Benin? Were they not still overthrown by the superior fire power of the European military and replaced by those who would dance to their evil tunes?

But at least they resisted, despite knowing the European had more power. They will forever have more honour than those who sold out their fellow black man to the whites. Although, the Europeans share a chunk of the blame, I don't think it's inferiority complex for one to accept the fact that they was instrumental in aiding slavery especially as most did it for wealth and fame. You should also know that slavery has long been existing among the blackman before the arrival of the first white men on its lands

I am not surprised. Adaibi has always been a stooge if the west. Slavery as oarticed among indigenous people is different from slavery in the west. Among indigenous people, slaves could own land, marry, build houses but never in the west. Besides, the kingdoms that tried to resist the slave traders what happened to them? This is the type of trash that happens when people refuse to research their history. She is another Kanye

theoldpretender:
Quickly answering....Africans did buy and sell slaves to themselves. Slaves were war captives, or even people expelled from their communities.
The Europeans and Arabs were just another market.

To use a "poor' example....a certain Nigerian was kidnapped in the late 19th century...from what is now Kogi state,and sold off somewhere to an 'owner' in what is NOW oyo state. He was a slave for 20 years, before he got free, converted to Chirstianity., and returned home to preach to his people. (He eventually went on to work with..not for... a white missionary as a preacher ).

On a side note...we did have some forms of currency before the Europeans....gold, manillas,cowries, etc.

If someone was kidnapped from Kogi and sold off to Oyo in the 19th century, that was because he/she had to be sold off to the Europeans who created the trade. The Europeans were already in our lands by that time, coercing kings, causing wars, providing weapons in order to catch more slaves.

Keep shut! and next time don't quote the whole article. If you could read, you would've seen where the author mentioned " after slavery was abolished ..." and elaborately described her family and tribe's participation in the whole ordeal.

musicwriter:
Whoever wrote this have his/her brain damaged. Slavery happened by coercion, kidnapping, fraud, war. If your ancestors participated in it that was because he was coerced to do what he didn't like in order to save his kingdom from invasion or to save his business. Our kings were given such conditions- to choose between their lives or be part of slavery. Of course, many chose to die fighting against it. Queen Nzinga of Namibia comes to mind. This leader fought the Portuguese to standstill and refused to surrender her domain to slavery. It was only after her defeat that they had their way.

Anybody who knows this fellow should ask him/her; how many slaves did your ancestor sell before the arrival of the Europeans? To whom?

Anybody interested should see the true history of slavery and slave acquisition in Africa http://www.africason.com/2016/03/the-true-history-of-slavery-and-slave.html

SmartyPants:
Across Africa slavery was already being practiced in various forms.

The article in the OP speaks about it in paragraph 2 :

Long before Europeans arrived, Igbos enslaved other Igbos as punishment for crimes, for the payment of debts, and as prisoners of war. The practice differed from slavery in the Americas: slaves were permitted to move freely in their communities and to own property, but they were also sometimes sacrificed in religious ceremonies or buried alive with their masters to serve them in the next life.

And here are some other articles:

http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/people-involved/enslaved-people/enslaved-africans/africa-slavery/

https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/curious-history-slavery-west-africa

A lot of people argue that traditional African Slavery was milder and had room for more altruism. However, all slavery involves the same basic abbrogation of a person's will and what we understand today, as human rights.

Thanks bro.

EasterDell:
"Brain Damage"... Your very choice of words expose the bile in you. Ok now let me add some good old sense to your deranged thinking!

A lion does not pity a goat, when he wants to eat... A human does not spare the chicken when hungry! That's the beauty of nature! Don't be weak, or you will pay the price dearly!
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The white man owes no apologies for dominating, enslaving and coercing you to do their economic bidding! They where clearly superior and if your lazy, unitintlligent, tree worshipping ancestors did what they were supposed to do, history would be different!

But noooo, they did nothing, and even today their children are still doing nothing!

Blacks were backwards and useless in ancient times, couldn't read, write, build anything meaningful!... Sadly enough they are still very useless today! Look at the whole of black Africa! a disgrace to the international community, corruption, diseases always blaming and begging people!

The black man owes himself some good dose of self respect, man up and be serious! No body owes you nothing! Lead well, study hard and build cities, technologies to dominate others!

On Point.

Quite a read @OP.

Wow very interesting read.

Your people are still selling themselves in Libya and other places. It’s genetic.

When it comes to crime, igbo takes lead. But this your story carry plenty lie. Igbos were Bushmen by then. They don't have kingdom, no leadership, no focus, no culture, plain naked homo sapiens. If you talk about slave trade, refer your issue to yorubas. Even history mentioned yoruba role in slave trade.

Laughing at all the idiots on NL who blame everything that goes wrong in Africa on everyone else in the world BUT AFRICANS!!! Realmindz I see you!


[img]https://media1./images/7d7ea8a8d7135f3ded1f3f8f82b598ab/tenor.gif?itemid=10351560[/img]

and the so called leaders are borrowing funds and stealing the future of their people to live in a fool's paradise in their colonial masters' lands.

Out of all the groups of people, only black africans today do not behave any differently from their ancestors. The fact that we still cherish and hold on to many of these barbaric traditions and yet feign democracy is just nauseating.

AnanseK:
Your people are still selling themselves in Libya and other places. It’s genetic.

lympy:
Reading this piece and the dodgy comments from those I suppose to be teenagers and have no love for educating themselves makes me sad.
I do not blame you but the government who hasn't taken education seriously enough to input History as a compulsory course in our curriculum.
The writer has addressed serious socio political issues that your small heads cannot comprehend.
For those who have visited the Badagry Slave route her Grand father is synonymous to Seriki Williams.
History is the study of the past which enables us to understand the present and project into the future.
In the words of Robert Nesta Marley AKA Bob Marley - If you know your history then you would know where you coking from! [color=#990000][/color]

I bet many of them didn't read the article. The lady just talked about her family involvement in slave trade and her village old tradition and her long extended family. Finish why d insult.

The truth is not all black in America are African Americans slaves. Before Christopher Columbus discovered America blacks were already there but they they are not west African slaves. Almost every continent had black living with them. Don't be fooled by people telling you that all blacks in America were from trans Atlantic slave that is a very big lie. Slave trade is an over exaggerated story

Very interesting. It's always nice to know about our culture and history. The author did a great job. The narrative was excellent.

I feel bad that my Tribe engaged in the Slave trade not to talk of if it were my Family. The French and British fought each other for 100 years straight and yet they never sold each other into Slavery. Till date our Politicians are still selling each their people for their personal comfort and security,so hunger and violence has filled the Land and the People pray for a Leader that can save the Nation.

Nehemiah 6:8
and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

Africans were partly responsible for the success of the transatlantic slave trade either knowingly or unknowingly. History must be told if we must grow as a people.

theoldpretender:
The black man in North America...the US and Canada ...still does have some issues with racisim (eg racial profiling, bad police treatment, poor schools, etc) but things as I said are better than they were in say the 1930's (when blacks could be lynched for flimsy reasons).

I should add that when I say things are better.....I usually throw in a lot of caveats. But that one na another long tori.

South America and Central America...hmm. In the US...you can see black faces on US TV shows. On telenovelas from South American countries with a large black population...zero (Even PLACES LIKE BRAZIL!)

Brazil feature blacks in some. You should see the series "City of Men".

emmyid:
Brazil feature blacks in some. You should see the series "City of Men".

Or an old one...Isaura the Slave girl (popular in Nigeria in the 90's)

thesicilian:
Can you elaborate on that please?

Slavery existed before the coming of the whites. I guess you didn't read the article. Kings had slaves, a King without a Slave wasn't a real King. Those captured during wars were turned slaves.

thesicilian:
Inferiority complex makes you blame yourself even for crimes perpetrated against you by those you feel are superior to you. Did the Africans ever have any choice on the matter of slave trade? Agreed some of our ancestors took an ungodly advantage of the situation, selling out their own kin for personal gains, but what happened to those who tried to resist the British and Portuguese exploitation like King Jaja of Opobo and Oba Ovonramwen of Benin? Were they not still overthrown by the superior fire power of the European military and replaced by those who would dance to their evil tunes?

True. The psychic burden of her family's history blinded her to an appreciation of this contrary point of view. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful and eloquent article.

Magichand:
My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-Trader

Adaobi Tricia NwaubaniJuly 15, 2018 5:00 AM


My parents’ home, in Umujieze, Nigeria, stands on a hilly plot that has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Traditionally, the Igbo people bury their dead among the living, and the ideal resting place for a man and his wives is on the premises of their home. My grandfather Erasmus, the first black manager of a Bata shoe factory in Aba, is buried under what is now the visitors’ living room. My grandmother Helen, who helped establish a local church, is buried near the study. My umbilical cord is buried on the grounds, as are those of my four siblings. My eldest brother, Nnamdi, was born while my parents were studying in England, in the early nineteen-seventies; my father, Chukwuma, preserved the dried umbilical cord and, eighteen months later, brought it home to bury it by the front gate. Down the hill, near the river, in an area now overrun by bush, is the grave of my most celebrated ancestor: my great-grandfather Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku. Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”

Long before Europeans arrived, Igbos enslaved other Igbos as punishment for crimes, for the payment of debts, and as prisoners of war. The practice differed from slavery in the Americas: slaves were permitted to move freely in their communities and to own property, but they were also sometimes sacrificed in religious ceremonies or buried alive with their masters to serve them in the next life. When the transatlantic trade began, in the fifteenth century, the demand for slaves spiked. Igbo traders began kidnapping people from distant villages. Sometimes a family would sell off a disgraced relative, a practice that Ijoma Okoro, a professor of Igbo history at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, likens to the shipping of British convicts to the penal colonies in Australia: “People would say, ‘Let them go. I don’t want to see them again.’ ” Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly one and a half million Igbo slaves were sent across the Middle Passage.

My great-grandfather was given the nickname Nwaubani, which means “from the Bonny port region,” because he had the bright skin and healthy appearance associated at the time with people who lived near the coast and had access to rich foreign foods. (This became our family name.) In the late nineteenth century, he carried a slave-trading license from the Royal Niger Company, an English corporation that ruled southern Nigeria. His agents captured slaves across the region and passed them to middlemen, who brought them to the ports of Bonny and Calabar and sold them to white merchants. Slavery had already been abolished in the United States and the United Kingdom, but his slaves were legally shipped to Cuba and Brazil. To win his favor, local leaders gave him their daughters in marriage. (By his death, he had dozens of wives.) His influence drew the attention of colonial officials, who appointed him chief of Umujieze and several other towns. He presided over court cases and set up churches and schools. He built a guesthouse on the land where my parents’ home now stands, and hosted British dignitaries. To inform him of their impending arrival and verify their identities, guests sent him envelopes containing locks of their Caucasian hair.

Funeral rites for a distinguished Igbo man traditionally include the slaying of livestock—usually as many cows as his family can afford. Nwaubani Ogogo was so esteemed that, when he died, a leopard was killed, and six slaves were buried alive with him. My family inherited his canvas shoes, which he wore at a time when few Nigerians owned footwear, and the chains of his slaves, which were so heavy that, as a child, my father could hardly lift them. Throughout my upbringing, my relatives gleefully recounted Nwaubani Ogogo’s exploits. When I was about eight, my father took me to see the row of ugba trees where Nwaubani Ogogo kept his slaves chained up. In the nineteen-sixties, a family friend who taught history at a university in the U.K. saw Nwaubani Ogogo’s name mentioned in a textbook about the slave trade. Even my cousins who lived abroad learned that we had made it into the history books.

Last year, I travelled from Abuja, where I live, to Umujieze for my parents’ forty-sixth wedding anniversary. My father is the oldest man in his generation and the head of our extended family. One morning, a man arrived at our gate from a distant Anglican church that was celebrating its centenary. Its records showed that Nwaubani Ogogo had given an armed escort to the first missionaries in the region—a trio known as the Cookey brothers—to insure their safety. The man invited my father to receive an award for Nwaubani Ogogo’s work spreading the gospel. After the man left, my father sat in his favorite armchair, among a group of his grandchildren, and told stories about Nwaubani Ogogo.

“Are you not ashamed of what he did?” I asked.

“I can never be ashamed of him,” he said, irritated. “Why should I be? His business was legitimate at the time. He was respected by everyone around.” My father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who has spent much of his life challenging government abuses in southeast Nigeria. He sometimes had to flee our home to avoid being arrested. But his pride in his family was unwavering. “Not everyone could summon the courage to be a slave trader,” he said. “You had to have some boldness in you.”

My father succeeded in transmitting to me not just Nwaubani Ogogo’s stories but also pride in his life. During my school days, if a friend asked the meaning of my surname, I gave her a narrative instead of a translation. But, in the past decade, I’ve felt a growing sense of unease. African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather. I read arguments for paying reparations to the descendants of American slaves and wondered whether someone might soon expect my family to contribute. Other members of my generation felt similarly unsettled. My cousin Chidi, who grew up in England, was twelve years old when he visited Nigeria and asked our uncle the meaning of our surname. He was shocked to learn our family’s history, and has been reluctant to share it with his British friends. My cousin Chioma, a doctor in Lagos, told me that she feels anguished when she watches movies about slavery. “I cry and cry and ask God to forgive our ancestors,” she said.

The British tried to end slavery among the Igbo in the early nineteen-hundreds, though the practice persisted into the nineteen-forties. In the early years of abolition, by British recommendation, masters adopted their freed slaves into their extended families. One of the slaves who joined my family was Nwaokonkwo, a convicted murderer from another village who chose slavery as an alternative to capital punishment and eventually became Nwaubani Ogogo’s most trusted manservant. In the nineteen-forties, after my great-grandfather was long dead, Nwaokonkwo was accused of attempting to poison his heir, Igbokwe, in order to steal a plot of land. My family sentenced him to banishment from the village. When he heard the verdict, he ran down the hill, flung himself on Nwaubani Ogogo’s grave, and wept, saying that my family had once given him refuge and was now casting him out. Eventually, my ancestors allowed him to remain, but instructed all their freed slaves to drop our surname and choose new names. “If they had been behaving better, they would have been accepted,” my father said.

The descendants of freed slaves in southern Nigeria, called ohu, still face significant stigma. Igbo culture forbids them from marrying freeborn people, and denies them traditional leadership titles such as Eze and Ozo. (The osu, an untouchable caste descended from slaves who served at shrines, face even more severe persecution.) My father considers the ohu in our family a thorn in our side, constantly in opposition to our decisions. In the nineteen-eighties, during a land dispute with another family, two ohu families testified against us in court. “They hate us,” my father said. “No matter how much money they have, they still have a slave mentality.” My friend Ugo, whose family had a similar disagreement with its ohu members, told me, “The dissension is coming from all these people with borrowed blood.”

I first became aware of the ohu when I attended boarding school in Owerri. I was interested to discover that another new student’s family came from Umujieze, though she told me that they hardly ever visited home. It seemed, from our conversations, that we might be related—not an unusual discovery in a large family, but exciting nonetheless. When my parents came to visit, I told them about the girl. My father quietly informed me that we were not blood relatives. She was ohu, the granddaughter of Nwaokonkwo.

I’m not sure if this revelation meant much to me at the time. The girl and I remained friendly, though we rarely spoke again about our family. But, in 2000, another friend, named Ugonna, was forbidden from marrying a man she had dated for years because her family found out that he was osu. Afterward, an osu friend named Nonye told me that growing up knowing that her ancestors were slaves was “sort of like having the bogeyman around.” Recently, I spoke to Nwannennaya, a thirty-nine-year-old ohu member of my family. “The way you people behave is as if we are inferior,” she said. Her parents kept their ohu ancestry secret from her until she was seventeen. Although our families were neighbors, she and I rarely interacted. “There was a day you saw me and asked me why I was bleaching my skin,” she said. “I was very happy because you spoke to me. I went to my mother and told her. You and I are sisters. That is how sisters are supposed to behave.”

Modernization is emboldening ohu and freeborn to intermarry, despite the threat of ostracization. “I know communities where people of slave descent have become affluent and have started demanding the right to hold positions,” Professor Okoro told me. “It is creating conflict in many communities.” Last year, in a town in Enugu State, an ohu man was appointed to a traditional leadership position, sparking mass protests. In a nearby village, an ohu man became the top police officer, giving the local ohu enough influence to push for reform. Eventually, they were apportioned a separate section of the community, where they can live according to whatever laws they please, away from the freeborn. “It will probably be a long time before all traces of slavery disappear from the minds of the people,” G. T. Basden, a British missionary, wrote of the Igbo in 1921. “Until the conscience of the people functions, the distinctions between slave and free-born will be maintained.”

Nwaubani Ogogo was believed to have acquired spiritual powers from the shrine of a deity named Njoku, which allowed him to wield influence over white colonists. Among his possessions, which are passed down to the head of the family, was the symbol of his alliance with Njoku: a pot containing a human head. “You had to cut the head straight into the pot while the person was still alive, without it touching the floor,” my father said. “It couldn’t just be anybody’s head. It had to be someone you knew.” In Nwaubani Ogogo’s case, this someone was most likely a slave. When Gilbert, my great-uncle and a previous head of our family, died in 1989, his second wife, Nnenna, a devout Christian, destroyed the pot. Shortly afterward, her children began to die mysterious deaths, one after another. Nnenna contracted a strange ailment and died in 2009. Some relatives began to fear that dark forces had been unleashed.

Last July, my father’s cousin Sunny, a professor of engineering, visited my parents to discuss another concern: a growing enmity in our family. Minor arguments had led relatives to stop speaking to one another. Several had become estranged from the family. “We always have one major disagreement or division or the other,” my father’s cousin Samuel told me. My cousin Ezeugo was not surprised by the worrying trend. “Across Igbo land, wherever there was slave trade with the white people, things never go well,” he said. “They always have problems there. Everybody has noticed it.” My relatives thought that our family’s history was coming back to haunt us.

Prior to colonization, the Igbo believed that spiritual forces controlled events. If enough misfortune piled up, a family might come to believe that it was the victim of an intergenerational curse resulting from the actions of an ancestor. Family members would seek out a juju priest, who would consult a deity, diagnose the root of the curse, and then expel it through a religious ritual. When foreign missionaries arrived, they persuaded the Igbos to embrace Christianity—openly, at least. But belief in ancestral curses has remained, cloaked in Bible passages that refer to God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” Many churches now offer services similar to the old rituals, in which a pastor replaces the juju priest and Jesus replaces the pagan god. This way, evil forces can be exposed without Christians engaging in idolatry. Deliverance usually requires a family to pray, fast, and renounce atrocities.

In 2009, the late priest Stephen Njoku wrote a book called “Challenge and Deal with Your Evil Foundations,” in which he argued that some people should change their names to rid themselves of curses. “It’s like building a house,” he told me. “If you don’t get the foundations right, if you used substandard materials or if the stones were not laid properly, the building will inevitably develop cracks and collapse.” A number of Igbo communities with names that extol gory histories have taken new ones. In 1992, people in my home town became concerned about several unexplained deaths of young people. After a period of communal prayer, people gathered in the village hall and voted to discard the community’s historic name, Umuojameze, which means “children of Ojam, the king.” Ojam was a deity whom the townspeople had worshipped before Christianization, and to whom they had made regular human sacrifices. They chose the new name, Umujieze, which means “children who hold the kingship,” to reflect our severance from the atrocities of the past.

My relatives disagreed about the cause of our family’s curse. Most believed that it was because of Nwaubani Ogogo’s slave trading. Some suspected that it was his broken alliance with Njoku. My father thought that it might have resulted from his human sacrifices. Sunny was not sure the family was cursed at all. “If our problems are because of the sins of our fathers, why are the white people making progress despite the sins of their fathers?” he said. Nevertheless, they agreed to hold a deliverance ceremony, and settled on a plan. On three days near the end of January, from 6 a.m. until noon, family members around the world would fast and pray. My father sent out a text message in preparation that included passages from the Bible. He has never been overtly religious, and it amused me to watch him organize a global prayer session. I teased him about the fact that he would have to skip breakfast, which was usually waiting for him at the same time each morning. “I’m a saint,” he declared.

On the first day of the fast, members of my family met in small groups in London, Atlanta, and Johannesburg. Some talked on the phone, and others chatted on social media. Thirty members gathered under a canopy in my parents’ yard. With tears in his eyes, my father explained that, in Nwaubani Ogogo’s day, selling and sacrificing human beings was common practice, but that now we know it to be deeply offensive to God. He thanked God for the honor and prestige bestowed on our family through my great-grandfather, and asked God’s forgiveness for the atrocities he committed. We prayed over a passage that my father texted us from the Book of Psalms:


Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.
During the ceremony, I was overwhelmed with relief. My family was finally taking a step beyond whispering and worrying. Of course, nothing can undo the harm that Nwaubani Ogogo caused. And the ohu, who are not his direct descendants, were not invited to the ceremony; their mistreatment in the region continues. Still, it felt important for my family to publicly denounce its role in the slave trade. “Our family is taking responsibility,” my cousin Chidi, who joined from London, told me. Chioma, who took part in Atlanta, said, “We were trying to make peace and atone for what our ancestors did.”

On the final day, my relatives strolled along a recently tarred stretch of road to our local Anglican church. The church was established in 1904, on land that Nwaubani Ogogo donated. Inside, a priest presided over a two-hour prayer session. At the end, he pronounced blessings on us, and proclaimed a new beginning for the Nwaubani family. After the ceremony, my family members discussed making it a yearly ritual. “This sort of thing opens up the mercy of God,” my mother, Patricia, said. “People did all these evil things but they don’t talk about it. The more people confess and renounce their evil past, the more cleansing will come to the land.”

https://www.google.com.ng/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader/amp

Very well written and captivating story. I enjoyed history back then in school especially stories about slave trade. But we were kind of made to believe that it was the whites who came and forcefully took our slaves. It's also interesting to know that Osu means slave- I never knew. That means there are Osus in other parts of Nigeria because other Nigerian tribes also engaged in slave trade,especially south-west,south-south and south-east. In badagry Lagos state,there heavy slave trade back then.

flyca:
Africans were the ones that went to villages and farms to capture fellow Africans and sell to white people! For money and for fame!

Blame Africans for slavery. The white men were simply merchants!

Great oral traditon by the way, and great article too.

The slave trade didn't happen in Nigeria alone. Ghana,republic of Benin,ivory coast,sierra Leone,etc.

musicwriter:
Whoever wrote this have his/her brain damaged. Slavery happened by coercion, kidnapping, fraud, war. If your ancestors participated in it that was because he was coerced to do what he didn't like in order to save his kingdom from invasion or to save his business. Our kings were given such conditions- to choose between their lives or be part of slavery. Of course, many chose to die fighting against it. Queen Nzinga of Namibia comes to mind. This leader fought the Portuguese to standstill and refused to surrender her domain to slavery. It was only after her defeat that they had their way.

Anybody who knows this fellow should ask him/her; how many slaves did your ancestor sell before the arrival of the Europeans? To whom?

Anybody interested should see the true history of slavery and slave acquisition in Africa http://www.africason.com/2016/03/the-true-history-of-slavery-and-slave.html

Is that why you had to quote the entire article, you idïot.

I'm sure you're an ibo man: selfish to the bone.

ELKHALIFAISIS:
my great grandpa really fvckup he would have give up and allow slave sellers to capture them... I would by now be a black America or black Australian... what use am I been a Nigerian abeg make them come sell me to New Zealand this Nigeria don tire me under sai Barber terrorist

Alot of black Americans would not find the humor in this statement.

theoldpretender:
Things are good for black Americans now...but up till the 1980's...it could be bad. And I mean bad .

(Back in 1970's, me dad had a chance to study in US. Stories of violent racisim prevented him from taking up the offer...though he went to the UK instead).

Blacks in America were subject to severe mistreatment. In 1964...a black maid was shot dead while going home from work by a gang of whites. No one has been prosecuted for the crime.

The reason why things have been better for blacks. Civil right fighters...and many of them suffered. MLK was shot dead, another one was shot dead changing the tire in front of his house, some were brutally beaten up (one black civil rights worker was beaten up and as a result was ill for three years), and some even had their neighbourhoods destroyed.

Blacks got the worst in schools, living areas, etc. Segregration, unjust violence, etc.

Things are better (they even elected a black President...and lots of black leaders)...but behind that is a lot of suffering.

Yes, things were really bad. Jim Crow South ( Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama) was about as worse as it could get. My grandmother told me about the Klan riding up and taking men out to be hung. My mom wasnt allowed to go to school and had to drink out of designated water fountains. My parents also talked about havin to ride in the back of the bus.
But thanks to their perserverance, determination, and hard work, my family are able to have a good life now.

GreenArrow1:
So the great grandfather could not locate and sell my village so that I'd be born outside of this poo-hole of a country? In the words of Eddie Griffin regarding the slave trade era and the reality now, "It started out bad, but it' small good now (mostly).”

Lolzz I wonder o. If they had sold my great,great,great grand father,I would not have been a Nigerian. Maybe an American,Portuguese,Brazilian,Cuban,Caribbean or Jamaican.

HomeOfMe:
Lolzz I wonder o. If they had sold my great,great,great grand father,I would not have been a Nigerian. Maybe an American,Portuguese,Brazilian,Cuban,Caribbean or Jamaican.

Exactly! All the aforementioned countries are better than Nigeria.

Bsuedu:
Alot of black Americans would not find the humor in this statement.

I don't care about their humor