Jaja and Nana in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria: Proto-Nationalists Or Emergent Capitalists (King Jaja of Opobo) (Governor Nana Olomu of Itsekiri) (Report)

Introduction The present corpus of Nigerian biographical research tends to focus mainly on the lives of leading Nigerian political figures (Osuntokun 1978; Cookey 1974; Arifalo and Ogen 2006:2). This over-concentration on political biographies is so pronounced to the extent that a number of Nigeria's pre-colonial commercial heroes and entrepreneurial gurus in the Niger Delta, such as King Jaja of Opobo and Governor Nana Olomu of Itsekiri have been wrongly classified and portrayed as proto-nationalists, rather than business gurus. Indeed, as far as Nigerian nationalist historiography is concerned, Jaja and Nana were among the first set of nationalists in precolonial Nigeria (Ikime 1980:276; Onabamiro 1983:56; Fajana and Biggs 1976:137). The present study, however, contends that contrary to the widespread claim that these distinguished personalities were proto-nationalists, they were instead, simply super merchants and prescient business strategists.