- Tenure
- 1883 — 1894 (deportation)
- Era
- Traditional Rulers — the pre-colonial polities (pre-1879)
- Mode of entry
- Elected Governor of the Benin River (Itsekiri trade headship) in 1883 in succession to his father Olomu
- Mode of exit
- Ebrohimi sacked by MacDonald's Niger Coast Constabulary, September 1894; Nana tried at Calabar and deported to Accra (1894–1906)
Itsekiri merchant-prince and headman of the Benin River palm-oil trade. Overlaid by: Sir Claude MacDonald, Consul-General of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, via the 1894 Ebrohimi Expedition. Monetary context: Nana's working capital was denominated in cowries and manillas — currencies the British had crashed by flooding the coast with Zanzibar ring cowries from the 1840s. The 1894 charge of 'refusing to open Itsekiri markets to British firms' was, at base, a charge of refusing sterling conversion. See [How the currency fell before the flag](/stories/how-the-currency-fell-before-the-flag).
Nana Olomu (c. 1852–1916) inherited his father's trade and political position in 1883 and built Ebrohimi into the dominant palm-oil entrepôt of the western Delta, with a private army of 5,000. When MacDonald's protectorate sought to break the Itsekiri trade monopoly in 1894, Nana refused to attend Calabar; MacDonald sent a punitive expedition that sacked Ebrohimi in September 1894. Nana surrendered, was tried at Calabar, and deported to Accra. He returned to Itsekiri country in 1906 and died at Koko in 1916.
Tier 1 · primary
Courts. Gazettes. National archives.
Tier 2 · corroborating
OCCRP. HRW. BudgIT. TheCable.
Tier 4 · tertiary, flagged
Wikipedia only where primary is pending. Always labelled.