Goldie's 1879 amalgamation of Miller Brothers, the Central African Trading Co., James Pinnock and the West African Co. into the United African Company was designed expressly to break the bargaining power of the African middlemen of the Oil Rivers — the Brass, Bonny, Opobo, Itsekiri and Aboh houses that had controlled the inland palm-oil trade since the end of the Atlantic slave trade. Within six months the UAC had cut buying prices at Akassa by a third and forbidden non-UAC firms to navigate the Niger above Onitsha.
The response was Nigeria's first documented merchant-led protest movement. R.B. Blaize, a Saro returnee and proprietor of the Lagos Times, organised the Lagos African merchants into a petitioning committee in 1880; J.P.L. Davies (Madam Tinubu's son-in-law) led parallel agitation in the Lagos Chamber of Commerce. The Brass chiefs — under Koko Mingi VIII — petitioned the British Consul Edward Hyde Hewett at Old Calabar from 1881 onwards. None of the petitions were granted. The UAC reorganised in 1882 as the National African Company, secured its Royal Charter on 10 July 1886 as the Royal Niger Company, and proceeded to the policies that produced the Akassa Raid of 1895.