In the early 1950s, among Nigerian students in Britain was a distinctive Benin royal: Prince Felix Osayande Akenzua, identified in contemporaneous press photographs as the youngest son of Oba Akenzua II and a student in the United Kingdom. One such image, taken in October 1950 at the International Students’ Club in Croydon, places him within the vibrant circle of West African elites and professionals networking in post-war London. Related photographs from the same season feature Olufemi Jibowu, daughter of Nigeria’s acting Chief Justice, highlighting how educated Africans were beginning to forge international networks that would later shape post-colonial leadership.
To situate Felix within Benin’s dynastic chronology, Oba Akenzua II reigned from 1933 to 1978, succeeded by Oba Erediauwa on 23 March 1979. These established dates align with the 1950 photograph that names Felix as the reigning Oba’s youngest son.
Where caution is required is in later claims that Felix became an author and Chief Magistrate in Bendel State. These statements appear frequently online but remain unverified in formal records such as court gazettes or national-newspaper obituaries. Until such documentary proof emerges, they must remain excluded from the factual record.
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From Benin to the Bight of Benin
Along the coast of West Africa, the Aguda, Afro-Brazilian returnees from Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, transformed the region’s cultural and religious landscape. Their story is especially vivid in Agoué, in today’s Benin Republic. Local testimony and modern scholarship agree that by the mid-1830s, a small Catholic chapel already stood there.
In 1845, a freed Bahian merchant named Joaquim d’Almeida erected a new, larger chapel dedicated to Our Lord of the Needs and Redemption of Black Men. He modelled it on a church in Salvador da Bahia and imported its religious objects, statues, and furnishings from Brazil. The result was an unmistakably trans-Atlantic structure, an African sanctuary built with Brazilian hands and materials, standing as a symbol of faith reborn on ancestral soil.
Lagos Island and the Aguda Imprint
The same Afro-Brazilian spirit animated the rise of Catholicism on Lagos Island. The Aguda community, composed of freed or repatriated Afro-Brazilians and their descendants, brought with them artisan skills, masonry, and capital. They financed chapels, organised sodalities, and introduced architectural styles, stuccoed facades and wrought-iron balconies, that still mark parts of the old city.
One long-told tradition recalls that Portuguese and Brazilian residents planted a Roman Catholic cross on Lagos Island in April 1853 to mark a future church site. Missionary journals of the period record the same event, confirming that it was indeed carried out by Catholic laymen. Another respected tradition names a catechist known as “Pa Antonio,” a former Bahian slave, who gathered worshippers and maintained Catholic prayers before any ordained priest had arrived. These episodes demonstrate how lay initiative and Afro-Brazilian devotion preceded formal missionary organisation.
By the late 19th century, these small beginnings evolved into lasting institutions. The Holy Cross Cathedral on Catholic Mission Street became the heart of Lagosian Catholic life. Its current Gothic-style building was completed between 1934 and 1939, later serving as the seat of the archdiocese when Lagos was elevated in 1950. The cathedral’s construction drew heavily on Aguda craftsmanship and financing, though the congregation soon expanded beyond its Brazilian roots to include Catholics from across Nigeria.
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Author’s Note
Viewed together, the Croydon photographs of Prince Felix Akenzua and the Aguda chapels of Agoué and Lagos map two points on the same Atlantic continuum. In 1950, a Benin prince was studying and socialising in post-war Britain, symbolising a modernising royal family engaging with the wider world. A century earlier, Afro-Brazilian returnees had crossed the ocean in the opposite direction, bringing their faith, architecture, and cultural memory to the shores of the Bight of Benin.
Both narratives, one aristocratic, the other diasporic, reveal the layered exchanges that have shaped West African identity. They remind us that Nigerian history is never insular but connected through royal diplomacy, merchant capital, and trans-Atlantic faith.
References
Getty Images. “Prince Felix Osayande Akenzua … Croydon 1950.”
Wikipedia. Entries on Oba Akenzua II and Oba Erediauwa.
Parés, Luis Nicolau. “Afro-Catholic Baptism and the Articulation of a Merchant Community: Agoué 1840–1860.” History in Africa 43 (2015).
Enslaved.org. “Joaquim d’Almeida.” Biographical profile.
Isichei, Elizabeth (ed.). Varieties of Christian Experience in Nigeria. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Holy Cross Cathedral, Lagos. Archdiocesan history and architectural records.
