Untold Story Behind Mobee Royal Family Slave Museum II Africa's Most Popular Slave Trader

Chief Mobee was actually a popular and very influential chief who actively engaged in the slave trade during his reign. His real name does not have Mobee in it.

During that era, whenever the white slave traders came around, he’d tell welcome them by saying “e mu obi je” in Yoruba. What this means is that they should pick colanut and eat. He never fails to do this every time they come.

And since the whites don’t really understand him, they started calling him chief “mu obi” later it transcended to Mobee and before long, the name Mobee stuck. The family also adopted this name ever since till this day.

“Chief Mobee who was later succeeded by his son who played a pivotal role in ensuring slavery stopped in Badagry. When he ascended the throne in 1886, he welcomed the missionaries who helped actualized this dream of putting an end to slavery. He died on the 16th of October 1893.

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During the slave era, Badagry as a whole served as a slave corridor where slaves were brought from all over the country e.g oyo, Ibadan, Ogun etc to be exported to different parts of Europe.

In Badagry was also a market called Blekete slave market (established in 1502). On every Blekete market day, 300 slaves were being sold on the average per day and 17,000 yearly.

So anyone bought by the whites will immediately be branded using a hot iron to crest the name of the owner on the slave’s body, before being chained around the neck and feet for the minimum of 18hours daily (depending on how long a slave will stay before being shipped out) and marched on a single file to the point of no return (a location across the lagoon where the shipment will take place).

Material That Can Be Found Inside The Mobee Royal Family Slave Museum

• A mouth-lock which was used in preventing the slaves from talking to each other and from eating the sugarcanes in the plantation.

How this works is that these metals will be inserted into the fire to make them red-hot before being inserted In between the lips of the slaves, leaving them to growl in pain while they work on the plantation.

• A hand chain which is used to hang any stubborn slave to a tree while others continue working.

• Hand cuffs for babies are used to chain kids together so that they won’t be disturbing their parents while working.

• A metallic staff of office which one of the servants of the chief usually carries along whenever the chief is going out. The sound which emanates from shaking the staff alerts everyone around that the chief is close by. So on sighting the chief, males prostrate while females will knee to show respect.

• cowries

The whites on their arrival don’t (and weren’t ready to) know how cowries worked in Nigeria as a legal tender, so they introduced barter system to settle the problem of exchange.

To achieve this, they brought in items such as dry gin, canon gun, gun powder, mirror, camera etc in exchange for human beings.

A small canon gun is usually exchanged for 50 human beings while the big ones will procure 100.

During this period also, “these canon guns served as different notifications whenever they were shot, and this was how it worked:

A canon gun is being shot thrice daily. The first shot is aimed at telling every slave that its time to go to the farm to work. The second shot is to alert everyone that work has started on the farm and the last shot is to warn people to stay indoors (that is after the working hours) as anyone caught after this period will be captured as slave.