Adóló’s son, Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, was living in exile in Calabar, surrounded by members of his kingdom who worked for the British administration while he was away. Ovonramwen will always be remembered as a hero in the Benin Kingdom’s history because of his valor and bravery. James Robert Phillips, the Niger Coast Protectorate’s deputy commissioner and consul, attempted to see Ovonramwen, the Oba of Benin, in Benin City in November 1896. The visit was intended to discuss a trade arrangement that the Oba was purportedly not honoring that he had previously established with the British. Phillips made a formal request to his superiors in London for approval to carry out the visit.
But Phillips went to Benin City at the end of December 1896 without waiting for an official reply. A British mission left the Oil Rivers Protectorate in January 1897 with the express purpose of holding talks with the Oba. The Benin authorities, on the other hand, believed that the true goal was to remove the Oba from office and saw this as a direct threat to his sovereignty. The Oba’s generals decided to launch an assault on the delegation as it got closer to Benin City.
With only two survivors, the ambush claimed the lives of almost every member of the expedition, including eight British officers and hundreds of African laborers and porters.
Admiral Sir Harry Rawson led a punitive expedition that the British mounted against the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 as payback. The expedition’s final acts were the ruthless demolition of Benin City, the theft of the renowned Benin Bronzes, and the methodical demolishing of the city’s strong defenses. Oba Ovonramwen was to be executed by the British, but he escaped into the nearby woodlands. On August 5, 1897, Ovonramwen finally made his way back to Benin City to publicly surrender after fleeing for several months. Upon his return to the city, he was resplendently attired, bedecked with coral beads, and surrounded by between seven hundred and eight hundred followers.
Desperate to escape banishment, Ovonramwen offered Consul General Ralph Moor 200 barrels of oil, worth £1,500, on the condition that he reveal the whereabouts of his 500 ivory tusks, which at the time were estimated to be worth over £2 million. This offer was turned down, though, because Moor had already found the ivory. Historian Sven Lindqvist describes this sequence of events in his book *Exterminate All the Brutes* as a British invasion. According to Lindqvist, Phillips’s expedition was a clandestine operation meant to make it easier for Oba Ovonramwen to be overthrown rather than a diplomatic effort. Lindqvist claimed that the British army disguising their troops as bearers and their weapons as luggage.
Despite numerous cautions from the Oba’s messengers not to infringe Benin’s territorial sovereignty, Phillips allegedly attempted to approach the Oba’s palace under the guise of talks. Phillips sent the Oba his walking staff in what was perceived as a calculated provocation, hoping to spark a fight that would allow the British to capture the kingdom. Along with two of his wives, Queen Egbe and Queen Aighobahi, Ovonramwen was banished to Calabar. Etinyin Essien Etim Offiong, the town’s founder, welcomed and housed him in Essien Town, a small town in Calabar. Around the start of 1914, he passed away in Calabar.Ultimately, Ovọnramwẹn was laid to rest in the royal palace grounds in Benin City.
