The Arochukwu and the Colonial Lie: Reassessing the Bight of Biafra Slave Trade Narrative

  Introduction   For generations, the Arochukwu, an Igbo subgroup in southeastern Nigeria, have been portrayed as the masterminds of a vast hinterland slave-trading network in the Bight of Biafra. According to colonial and later popular accounts, the Aro "Confederacy" allegedly controlled major slave routes, manipulated the Ibini Ukpabi (Long Juju) oracle as a mechanism for enslavement, and coordinated military raids through allies such as Abam and Ohafia .   However, a close examination of primary sources reveals that this narrative rests almost entirely on late-19th-century British imperial propaganda , not on consistent African or European testimony from the peak centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. This paper argues that the Aro did not organize a centralized slave-trading system , and that the myth of the “Aro slave empire” was constructed to legitimize British occupation. The true engines of large-scale enslavement in the region were Eur...