A British Green Party candidate advocating for trillions of pounds in slavery reparations has ignited debate after revelations that she descends from Nigerian royal families who profited extensively from the transatlantic slave trade.
Antoinette Fernandez, the Green Party's 'reparations officer' for its Global Majority Greens group, is the daughter of Abiola Dosunmu and late billionaire Antonio Deinde Fernandez, who amassed an $8.7 billion fortune in oil, gas, and mining before his death in 2015. Through her mother, Fernandez descends directly from the Obas (kings) of Lagos, historical figures whom scholars identify as major participants in slave trafficking.
According to research by Professor Kristian Alim, a historian at the University of Lagos, one of Fernandez's ancestors personally owned 1,400 enslaved people, while another transported enslaved Africans from Brazil back to Lagos to construct buildings in the royal quarter.
The revelations, first reported by the Daily Mail, challenge simplistic narratives about slavery reparations that frame the issue as exclusively European culpability versus African victimhood.
"This case demonstrates what historians have long known but public discourse often ignores: African elites were integral to the slave trade's operation," said Dr. Funmilayo Ogundipe, who researches Lagos history at the University of Ibadan. "The Obas of Lagos controlled the port, negotiated with European slavers, and accumulated enormous wealth from human trafficking. Any serious reparations conversation must acknowledge this complexity."
In Nigeria, as across Africa's giants, challenges are real but entrepreneurial energy and cultural creativity drive progress. Yet historical honesty about African elite complicity in slavery remains politically sensitive, particularly when descendants of those elites maintain positions of wealth and influence.
Lagos became one of West Africa's most significant slave-trading ports during the 18th and 19th centuries. The city's rulers extracted taxes and commissions from every enslaved person passing through the port, generating revenues that funded palace construction, imported luxury goods, and consolidated political power.





