Unmasking King Jaja’s Legacy

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For the purpose of this prompt, I had to confirm if King Jaja had any statue erected in his honor, and best believe there is one at the community he founded. Basically the purpose of this statue was to honor him for his bravery and how he supposedly stood up against colonial influence, but then was that the real story of Jaja or a narrative they want to fly for damage control and consolations?

You see, before now, I used to think that the likes of King Jaja of Opobo and Oba Ovonramwen of Benin were heroes, but having visited my friend at his hometown in Buguma and listened to him narrate how King Jaja was an active and willing participant in the transatlantic slave trade, all my respect and admiration withered. The conversation, which happened to take us down memory lane, was triggered by a little sightseeing in his committee.

As we went from compound to compound, I couldn’t help but notice a cannon strategically situated at the entrance of each compound. When we got back to his own compound, I had questioned if the cannon guns were real or just artifacts, and he said yes, they were real and were used for war back in the day.

Behind the cannon gun was a house, which can be likened to a shrine each family erected to honor their ancestors. And while he walked me through their practice and lifestyle, he paused and sighed, then shook his head. Next was, do you know King Jaja of Opobo during his time was exchanging ten of his strongest warriors for a cannon gun?

I was shocked, as I couldn’t believe my ears, so I questioned just to be sure I understood and was possibly not imagining things… “So you mean ten human beings like you and I were exchanged for this inanimate object?”

He nodded in affirmation and then went further to state that it was the exact reason the colonial masters could get to him, as there were no strong men left to protect him.

According to my friend, who took me further to lecture me on the methods of trade back then, he said King Jaja, having gained some level of influence with his dealings with the colonial master, now felt too authoritative to be answerable to them, so out of greed he started moving to monopolize the trade of palm oil, a move that the colonial masters didn’t like, hence the fallout.

Looking at the statue of Jaja, we’d see a cannon at its base. While people might want to say the cannon is a symbol of his bravery or his war like nature; knowing what I know about him now, all I see are the freedom of able bodied men, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and husbands sacrificed for a peace of object.

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You see, this account of his was something that never made it to the historical aspect of our education.

In fact, when you hear history like this, you won’t wonder anymore why they stopped teaching it in school or why it is filled with so many lies because if people, especially the indigenes of Opobo, become aware of the actions of Jaja during his reign, the statue made in his honor at Opobo Island would be brought down because, really, how do you sell your own people for iron?

Like Jaja’s monument, most of the statues that we see today as symbols of good faith actually have embedded in them a dark side that makes them unfit for the honor that they get.

In real time, if the atrocities of these people while they were alive blew out in the open, we’d see how most of these honorary statuses or monuments are actually insulting to our memories as human beings and as such do not deserve the immortalization that they got.