Onyeama, slavery and African agency

will be inviting Mr. Onyeama to meet so as to apologise to him in person, on behalf of the school, and to make clear that he will always be welcome at Eton.” Onyeama accepted the apology and invitation, saying he would return to Eton to personally accept the apology as long as Eton covered the cost of his travels and accommodation.

Onyeama, a journalist and author, has written about 28 books, including a biography of his late grandfather, a powerful and influential slave trader and later, ally of the British colonial government. When he was asked whether he would like to apologise for his grandfather’s role in slavery, he demurred. According to him, his grandfather was ignorant and possesses little agency unlike the Europeans and Americans who knew what they were doing.

“My grandfather had no rudiments of any form of education at all and he knew nothing beyond the ‘kill or be killed’ way of life in those days,” Onyeama said. He was not done justifying his grandfather’s actions.

“It wasn’t done as a means of oppression. It was a means of livelihood and a demonstration of power and might. It was the way of life in old Africa before the white man brought civilisation, so to speak.”

This is a classical African attitude – the refusal to accept responsibility for just anything and always playing the victim card.

For context, Dillibe Onyeama is the brother of the current Minister of External Affairs, Godfrey Onyeama. Their father, Charles Dadi Umeha Onyeama, studied at Oxford, mixed well with the top of British society, worked as a judge in Nigeria and rose to the position of a judge at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. With his wide connections in the British society, the senior Onyeama was able to register his second son, Dellibe, at Eton, at birth – the first black boy to be so registered in the elite institution. His entire family’s education and privileges was built on the back of their grandfather’s resources accumulated from selling his fellow humans as slaves. Yet, Mr Onyeama feels no need to apologise to victims and is still denying his grandfather’s agency.

We know the absence of education is no excuse for African involvement in the slave trade. It is pure greed and love of lucre. In fact, knowledge that existed then almost denied the humanity of blacks or placed them as inferiors to White. Besides, the Holy Books to which the white merchants all subscribed to also justified slavery.

Also, the Igbo society in which the senior Onyeama lived was not the “kill or be killed” society Mr Onyeama described. Yes, there were constant internecine wars, and there was slavery, but it was not an anarchic society. Adaobi Tracia Nwaubani, in a piece for the New York Times last year described the Igbo society as composed of three categories: the diala, ohu and osu. The diala, of course, were the freeborn and enjoyed their full status at all times, except when they are captured in war or commit heinous crimes. The ohu were war captives from distant communities, enslaved in payment for debts or as punishment for crimes.

Equally, “a diala who wanted a blessing, such as a male child, or who was trying to avoid tribulation, such as a poor harvest or an epidemic, could give a slave or a family member to a shrine as an offering; a criminal could also seek refuge from punishment by offering himself to a deity.” This person then becomes an osu. “He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart—a taboo forever, and his children after him.”

The diala often kept the ohu as domestic servants, sacrificed them in religious ceremonies or buried