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.