High Chief Menu-Toyon I, known as Chief Nunayon Mobee, belonged to a generation of Nigerian traditional leaders whose lives crossed the divide between British colonial government and national independence. Born on 16 February 1891, he lived through profound political and social change and died on 24 June 1963, less than three years after Nigeria achieved independence.
Chief Nunayon Mobee became a recognised traditional figure in Badagry and was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1950. In 1957, he became Menu-Toyon I, the Mobee of Badagry Kingdom.
Those dates place his public life at an important historical intersection.
Born towards the end of the nineteenth century, Nunayon Mobee grew up during a period when British influence on the Lagos coast was expanding and older indigenous political institutions continued to operate alongside colonial structures. By the time he assumed the Menu-Toyon title in 1957, constitutional change was rapidly carrying Nigeria towards independence.
He would live to see that independence achieved on 1 October 1960.
His story is also closely connected to one of Badagry’s most difficult historical inheritances: the participation of earlier local chiefs and merchants in the Atlantic slave trade. Yet the slave-trading Chief Mobee of nineteenth-century Badagry and the twentieth-century Menu-Toyon I were different men who belonged to different phases of the town’s history.
Understanding that distinction is essential to understanding both Nunayon Mobee and the history of the Mobee institution.
Badagry Before Menu-Toyon I
Badagry, in present-day Lagos State, occupied a strategically important position along the lagoon and Atlantic commercial networks of the Bight of Benin. Its access to inland routes and the coast helped make the settlement an important centre of regional and international commerce.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enslaved Africans became part of that commerce. European and Brazilian merchants, African intermediaries and local political figures participated at different stages in systems that captured, transported, confined and exported enslaved people.
EXPLORE NOW: Democratic Nigeria
Badagry’s political organisation was more complex than a simple system centred on one absolute ruler. Historical research describes the town as containing several quarters or wards whose chiefs exercised substantial political and commercial authority. This structure allowed individual chiefly families to develop their own relationships with merchants, neighbouring communities and foreign commercial interests.
The Mobee institution was associated particularly with Boekoh Quarters.
One of the best known nineteenth-century figures associated with it was Chief Sumbu Mobee. Historical accounts identify Sumbu as a High Chief of Boekoh Quarters who participated in slave-trade traffic during the nineteenth century. He died on 16 December 1893.
Sumbu Mobee’s role forms an important part of Badagry’s history and of the later historical memory preserved by the Mobee family.
High Chief Menu-Toyon I and Sumbu Mobee
The lives of High Chief Menu-Toyon I and Sumbu Mobee briefly overlapped.
Nunayon Mobee was born in 1891, while Sumbu died in 1893. Their public careers, however, belonged to different historical periods.
Sumbu’s activities were rooted in nineteenth-century Badagry and its slave-trading economy. Nunayon’s documented prominence belongs primarily to the twentieth century, particularly the final decades of British colonial rule and the early years of Nigerian independence.
The Mobee name therefore represents an institution extending across successive office-holders rather than the life of a single individual.
What Nunayon inherited was a traditional institution with a long and complicated past.
That history remains visible today through objects preserved at the Mobee Family Museum in Boekoh Quarters, where chains, restraints and other material associated with slavery form part of Badagry’s heritage landscape. The museum preserves reminders of the role played by earlier generations during the era of the Atlantic slave trade and its eventual suppression.
The collection has transformed what was once a family inheritance into part of Nigeria’s public memory of the Atlantic slave trade.
The 1950 Justice of the Peace Appointment
One of the most important events in Nunayon Mobee’s public life came in 1950, when he was appointed a Justice of the Peace.
At the time, Nigeria’s governor was Sir John Stuart Macpherson, who served as Governor of Nigeria from 1948 until 1954 before becoming Governor-General.
Macpherson’s administration coincided with a crucial phase of Nigeria’s constitutional development. The Macpherson Constitution of 1951 expanded Nigerian participation in government and introduced a more representative federal structure while the country remained under British colonial authority.
Nunayon Mobee’s Justice of the Peace appointment placed him among recognised local figures who exercised public standing within the colonial administrative environment.
The appointment preceded his accession as Menu-Toyon I by several years.
By 1950, Nunayon Mobee was about 59 years old. His appointment therefore shows that his recognised public status was already established before he assumed the Menu-Toyon title.
Becoming Menu-Toyon I in 1957
In 1957, Chief Nunayon Mobee became Menu-Toyon I, the Mobee of Badagry Kingdom.
The timing was historically significant.
Nigeria was only three years away from independence. Constitutional negotiations, regional politics and growing Nigerian participation in government were transforming the colonial state. Traditional institutions nevertheless remained important within local communities and continued to coexist with developing electoral and administrative structures.
Menu-Toyon I therefore assumed his chiefly position at a moment when Nigeria itself was changing rapidly.
He occupied the office during the final years of British colonial rule and remained in it after independence on 1 October 1960.
His life consequently bridged colonial and independent Nigeria.
When he died on 24 June 1963, Nigeria had been independent for less than three years and had not yet become a republic. Nigeria became a republic on 1 October 1963, several months after his death.
Menu-Toyon I thus belonged to the final generation of traditional leaders who personally experienced both mature colonial government and the birth of sovereign Nigeria.
EXPLORE NOW: Military Era & Coups in Nigeria
Traditional Authority in a Changing Nigeria
The survival of the Mobee institution illustrates a broader feature of Nigerian history.
Independence did not erase older forms of traditional authority. Chiefs, kings and hereditary institutions continued to perform cultural, social and community roles even as elected governments and modern administrative structures expanded around them.
Menu-Toyon I represented an institution rooted in Badagry’s older political order while also occupying recognised public standing during the colonial period and continuing into independent Nigeria.
His public life therefore stood at the meeting point of three overlapping systems: indigenous chiefly authority, colonial administration and the emerging Nigerian nation-state.
Traditional rulers across Nigeria continued to hold importance after independence, particularly as custodians of culture, community identity and local historical memory.
For Badagry, the Mobee institution became especially significant because of its connection with the town’s Atlantic slave-trade history.
The Mobee Family Museum and the Burden of Memory
The continuing importance of the Mobee story is perhaps clearest at the Mobee Royal Family Slave Relics Museum.
The museum preserves objects associated with the slave-trading era, including chains, restraints and other items linked to enslavement. These objects form part of a wider historical landscape in Badagry that includes the Badagry Heritage Museum, the Vlekete Slave Market area, the Seriki Williams Abass compound and sites associated with the routes followed by enslaved people towards the Atlantic coast.
The Mobee collection carries particular significance because it is preserved by descendants of a chiefly institution whose earlier members were connected with the historical period being remembered.
That creates a powerful form of historical stewardship.
Preserving such material does not erase ancestral participation in slavery. Instead, the surviving objects allow later generations to confront the reality of a system in which African intermediaries and political figures participated alongside European, Brazilian and other Atlantic merchants.
For modern visitors, the museum therefore represents more than a collection of historical artefacts. It forms part of Badagry’s continuing engagement with the human consequences of the Atlantic slave trade.
High Chief Menu-Toyon I’s Legacy Today
The traditional institution associated with High Chief Menu-Toyon I continued after his death.
Contemporary Nigerian reporting identifies High Chief Patrick Yedenu Mobee, Menu-Toyon II, as the present Mobee figure associated with Boekoh and as a custodian of the family’s historical heritage.
In April 2026, Patrick Yedenu Mobee marked his 70th birthday alongside celebrations associated with his traditional leadership and stewardship of the slave-relic collection.
The Mobee Family Museum also remains part of Badagry’s recognised historical landscape. Visitors continue to encounter objects connected with slavery and the history of the Mobee lineage.
The continued survival of the title, the family compound and the museum gives Menu-Toyon I’s story relevance beyond the dates 1891 to 1963.
The institution survived him. The family survived him. The historical objects survived him.
Most importantly, the difficult questions raised by the family’s past survived him.
They concern responsibility, memory and the way societies preserve histories that are painful rather than celebratory.
Badagry’s historical sites now play an important role in Nigerian heritage tourism and in the wider remembrance of the Atlantic slave trade. The Mobee collection occupies a distinctive place within that landscape because it connects material artefacts with the history of a traditional institution that survived from the nineteenth century into modern Nigeria.
Conclusion
High Chief Menu-Toyon I, Chief Nunayon Mobee, belonged firmly to twentieth-century Badagry. Born on 16 February 1891, he emerged as a recognised traditional figure, became a Justice of the Peace in 1950 and assumed the title Menu-Toyon I, Mobee of Badagry Kingdom, in 1957.
EXPLORE: Nigerian Civil War
He lived through the final decades of colonial Nigeria and witnessed independence in 1960 before his death on 24 June 1963.
His place in history should be understood alongside, but separately from, that of Chief Sumbu Mobee, the nineteenth-century High Chief associated with Badagry’s slave-trading period. Although both belonged to the history of the Mobee institution, they represented different generations and different historical circumstances.
Menu-Toyon I’s enduring significance lies in the intersection of continuity and change. He inherited an old chiefly office with a complicated past, occupied it during Nigeria’s transition to independence and became part of a lineage whose descendants continue to preserve material reminders of Badagry’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.
More than six decades after his death, his name survives within an institution that connects traditional leadership, colonial history, Nigerian independence and the continuing responsibility to remember one of the darkest chapters in Atlantic history.
Author’s Note
The life of High Chief Menu-Toyon I illustrates how traditional institutions can survive profound political change while carrying the weight of earlier generations. Nunayon Mobee’s twentieth-century leadership belonged to the era of colonial administration and Nigerian independence, while the history associated with earlier Mobee chiefs reaches back into nineteenth-century Badagry and the Atlantic slave trade. Today, the survival of the Mobee title and the preservation of slave-trade relics provide an important link between these different periods, reminding modern audiences that meaningful historical memory requires both the preservation of heritage and a willingness to confront the difficult parts of the past.
References
National Library of Nigeria. Nigeria Year Book for 1954. Contemporary record identifying Sir John Stuart Macpherson as Governor of Nigeria.
Nigeria Gazette. Government records issued during the administration of Sir John Stuart Macpherson as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria.
Sorensen-Gilmour, Caroline. Badagry 1784–1863: The Political and Commercial History of a Pre-Colonial Lagoonside Community in South West Nigeria. PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 1995.
Avoseh, T. Ola. A Short History of Badagry. Ife-Olu Printing Works, Lagos, 1938.
National Library of Nigeria historical collection. Historical account of Chief Sumbu Mobee of Boekoh Quarters, his involvement in nineteenth-century slave traffic and his death in December 1893.
Badagry Local Government. “Historical Monuments”. Official description of the Mobee Family Museum, Boekoh Quarters, and Badagry’s historical sites.
National Portrait Gallery. Biographical record for Sir John Stuart Macpherson, Governor of Nigeria from 1948 and Governor-General from 1954.
TheCable. “Destination Badagry: No Longer a Whispering Tourism Conversation”. Historical account of Chief Nunayon Mobee, his 1950 Justice of the Peace appointment and his emergence as Menu-Toyon I in 1957.
Vanguard. “Badagry: Steeps in Slave History”, 2017. Account of Chief Nunayon Mobee and Badagry’s slave-trade heritage.
Reuters. Photographic documentation of the Mobee Royal Family Slave Relics Museum and surviving artefacts associated with the history of enslavement in Badagry.
New Telegraph. “Custodian Of Slave Relics Museum Turns 70”, 5 April 2026. Contemporary account of Patrick Yedenu Mobee and the continuing Mobee institution.
Wikimedia Commons. Photographic record of High Chief Menu-Toyon I, including his recorded lifespan and Justice of the Peace appointment date.
