Chief Nana Olomu (born c.1852, died Itsekiri, 3 July 1916) was the Governor of the Benin River under the Itsekiri commercial system from 1884 to 1894, the largest single supplier of palm oil and palm-kernel to the British Niger Coast Protectorate, and — at his height — the most heavily armed African ruler on the western Niger Delta.
## The trading capital at Ebrohimi
Nana's commercial base was at Ebrohimi, an entirely artificial island town he built on the swamps of the Benin River at the confluence of the Ethiope and Jamieson rivers, defended by stockades, mounted with 106 cannons captured or purchased from European traders, and garrisoned by an estimated 3,000 armed retainers and slaves. Ebrohimi was at once a fortress, a depot, a slave market, a customs post and the residence of the most successful Itsekiri merchant of the late 19th century. The British called him 'the merchant prince of the Western Delta' and dealt with him as the de facto sovereign of the river.
## The 'monopoly' charge
The quarrel was the same quarrel they had had with Jaja of Opobo seven years earlier. Nana, as Governor of the River, controlled which European factors could trade with which Urhobo and Isoko interior producers; he set prices; he charged anchorage and 'comey' dues. The Royal Niger Company and the smaller British factors at Sapele wanted direct access to the producers without paying Itsekiri middleman dues. The Niger Coast Protectorate, declared in 1893, took their side.
## The Ebrohimi Expedition
Consul-General Sir Claude MacDonald dispatched a punitive expedition under Vice-Consul Ralph Moor in August 1894. The force comprised a Royal Navy detachment (HMS *Phoebe*, HMS *Alecto*, HMS *Philomel*, HMS *Widgeon*, HMS *Thrush*), about 300 marines and 400 Niger Coast Constabulary, with Maxim guns and artillery. After three weeks of skirmishing along the creek approaches, Ebrohimi was reduced by naval bombardment on 25 September 1894. The fortress was found to contain — in addition to the 106 cannons and 1,640 muskets — 8,300 kegs of gunpowder, the largest single ordnance cache captured anywhere in West Africa to that date.
## The trial and exile
Nana surrendered to the British Consulate in Lagos in November 1894, was tried by a special Consular Court at Old Calabar on charges of slave-trading, blockade-running and obstruction of British commerce, was sentenced to death, had the sentence commuted to perpetual exile, and was deported to Accra. He remained in the Gold Coast until 1906, when, after a long campaign by the Itsekiri Council and his own son Chief Johnson Olomu, he was permitted to return — though under restriction and stripped of his governorship — to the Benin River. He spent his remaining ten years building a new compound at Koko and rebuilding what could be rebuilt of the Itsekiri trading order.
His return in 1906 is commemorated annually in Itsekiri ceremonial as 'Neville's Day', after the British Consul Frederick Neville who signed the return-from-exile order — see Chief Nanna Olomu's Return from Exile.
## What it meant
The destruction of Ebrohimi closed the last great African-led trading polity on the western Delta. Within three years the British would sack Benin (1897); within five they would launch the Anglo-Aro War (1901). The pattern was uniform and explicit: the British did not conquer a continent of stateless tribes. They conquered, one by one, the commercial counterparties who had become rich enough to set their own terms.