By Princess Tanimola
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Sara Forbes Bonetta was a West African Egbado Omoba who was orphaned in inter-tribal warfare at the age of eight and subsequently captured by slave-raiders. Intended by her Dahomeyan captors to be a human sacrifice, she was rescued by Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy, who convinced King Ghezo of Dahomey to give her to Queen Victoria, "She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites," Forbes wrote later. He named her Sara Forbes Bonetta. Victoria was impressed by the young princess' exceptional intelligence, and had Sara raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.
—Wikipedia
'The Egbado, now Yewa, are a clan of the Yoruba people' and community in Ogun State, Nigeria. Omoba is a Yoruba word for Prince or Princess therefore she was an Egbado Princess. According to a blog on her life history, her daughter named Victoria was the Queen’s goddaughter but Wikipedia said they both served as goddaughters ‘of the Queen of the British Empire’. Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta aka African Princess was married to a Yoruba merchant James Labulo Davies and died at the age of 37 in 1880 after a battle with tuberculosis.
Yewa Clan
Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta
At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess in Victorian England
“Recitation By The Sold Slaves
I am leaving this land,
My Spirit leave with me.
I shall not come back now,
My shackles do not break.
It is the shackles that hold the ship down.
My ancestors bear me witness,
I shall not return.
This land shall depart,
My soul do not revolt,
My spirit go along with me.
I depart to that land unknown
I shall not return.”
Former Badagry Slave Port in Lagos State, Nigeria
