TRADITIONAL AFRICAN rulers whose ancestors collaborated with European and Arab slave traders should follow Britain and the US by saying sorry, according to human rights organisations.
The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria has written to tribal chiefs saying: “We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless.”
The appeal has reopened a sensitive debate over the part some chiefs played in helping to capture their fellow Africans and sell them into bondage as part of the transatlantic slave trade.
The congress argued that the ancestors of the chiefs had helped to raid and kidnap defenceless communities and traded them to Europeans. They should now apologise to “put a final seal to the history of slave trade”, it said.
Estimates vary but it is suggested that 10 million to 28 million Africans were sent to the Americas and sold into slavery between 1450 and the early 19th century.
More than one million are believed to have died in transit across the so-called “middle passage” of the Atlantic due to inhumane conditions on slave ships.
Shehu Sani, head of the congress, said that, on behalf of the buyers of slaves, the ancestors of the traditional rulers had “raided communities and kidnapped people, shipping them away across the Sahara or across the Atlantic”.
That position was endorsed by Henry Bonsu, a British-born broadcaster of Ghanaian descent who examined the issue in Ghana for a radio documentary. – (Guardian service)