Captain J.P Labulo Davies: The merchant who donated £50 seed funding for the establishment of Nigeria’s first secondary school – CMS Grammar School
Whenever the story of the first secondary school in Nigeria – Christian Missionary Society (CMS) Grammar School, Bariga, in Lagos is told, either in abridged or full version, it will remain a half-truth without the mention of Captain Labulo Davies, a Merchant Sailor and in-law of the Queen of England – Queen Victoria, who gave a donation that brought the dream of the founder to reality.
The activities of European missionaries to Nigeria in the 18th and 19th Century may have been tainted by the Atlantic slave trade, nevertheless, the impact of their activities which led to the establishment of schools in hinterlands and urban centres across Nigeria left a mark that can never be erased.
The Anglican Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Baptist Convention and the Catholic Society of African Mission believed that if missionary activities would succeed in Africa, a foundation for education must first be laid, thus they established schools and hospitals with the primary objective of converting the natives to Christianity through education and the strategy yielded great result.
“The schools taught young Nigerians to aspire to the virtues of white Christian civilization,” James Coleman wrote in his book ‘Nigerian background to nationalism’.
One of the many results of the missionaries activities in Nigeria is CMS Grammar School, Lagos, founded on June 6, 1859 by Thomas Babington Macaulay, an Anglian Priest and father of Nigerian nationalist Herbert Macaulay.
While the name of Macaulay appears boldly wherever the history of CMS Grammar School is written, the unsung titan who was also instrumental to the actualisation of the establishment of the school was Captain J.P.L Davies who had had previous experience as a teacher in Sierra Leone before returning to Lagos.
From being a school teacher with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Sierra Leone to becoming one of only two Africans trained as officers in the British Navy, Davies went on to become a successful businessman. He acquired his own ships to trade along the West African coast and eventually became a pioneer in cocoa cultivation, contributing to the economic success of the Western region of early Nigeria.
Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies was born on August 13, 1828 to liberated African slaves of Yoruba extraction (Abeokuta and Ogbomosho) who eventually settled in the village of Bathurst, near Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. After his secondary education, he became a teacher at CMS Grammar School in Freetown, that experience must have enriched him with the importance of education and prompted him to support Macaulay’s dream with the seed funding to start the first secondary school in Nigeria.
Many writers have described Labulo as an exceptionally brilliant young man whose brilliance caught the attention of the colonial abolitionists who wanted to train indigenous Africans to man essential services for the emancipated continent. In 1849, after the British Admiralty accepted this proposal, they took a set of African boys for training on ships belonging to the British Preventive Squadron. The plan was to turn them into captains of merchant ships, after a rigorous selection exercise, Davies and another boy were selected and placed as cadets under Commander Robert Coote on the HMA Volcano, a formidable war sloop. That marked the genesis of his naval career.
Within three years, Davies rose from cadet to midshipman and eventually to lieutenant before retiring from the Navy in 1852 and became a merchant vessel captain, travelling along the West African coast. In 1856, he eventually settled in Lagos, where he became known as Capt. J.P.L. Davies.
On Thursday August 14, 1862, at St Nicholas’ Church, Brighton, Sussex in England, Davies got married to his wife, Sarah Forbes, who was 18 years old then and 13 years younger than Davies. Historians likened the ceremony to a royal wedding because it directly involved Queen Victoria who gave approval for the union as the foster mother of the bride (a daughter of an African slave).
“For several days before the wedding, the whole of Brighton was agog with the news of the grand marriage of an African couple rumoured to be of royal pedigree,” Prof Adeyemo Elebute, an alumnus of CMS Grammar School, wrote in his book “The life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A colossus of Victorian Lagos.
The story of Sarah Forbes is similar to Davies. She was described as an intelligent slave girl captured by the Dahomeans’ army during the invasion and sacking of her Oke Oda/Ilobi homestead was sacked and her parents were killed in 1848 when she was about five years old. She was handed over as a gift to the visiting Commander Forbes by King Gezo of Dahomey (now Benin Republic) on July 5, 1850.
Ina as she was then known, a corruption of the Yoruba name Aina, eventually made it to England with her adoptive father who renamed her Sarah Bonetta Forbes after his ship and his own surname. Queen Victoria eventually adopted Ina and sent her to study at Cheltenham, a famous private boarding school for girls. While in England, Davies and Sarah had their first child, Victoria (1863) named after Queen Victoria. Upon their return to Lagos, they had Arthur (1871) and Stella (1873) and Sarah died of Tuberculosis on August 15, 1880.
Davies is also credited as the pioneer of cocoa farming in West Africa, and he established a prosperous cocoa farm in Ijon, Western Lagos. In April 1859 when Babington Macaulay was to establish CMS Grammar School, as a former teacher himself, Davies provided Macaulay with £50 seed funding to buy books and equipment needed for the school. With the seed funding, Macaulay opened C.M.S. Grammar School on June 6, 1859. In 1867, Davies also made another donation of £100 toward a CMS Grammar School Building Fund.
On August 29, 1906, Capt. Davies died at his Lagos home, and was buried the next day at Ajele Cemetery, near Campos, Lagos Island.
CMS Grammar School which he funded its establishment has produced several prominent Nigerians from the 19th Century to the present age, some of them include – Herbert Macaulay (son to the founder); the military governor of the Eastern Region, Odumegwu Ojukwu (who later transferred to Kings College); Otunba TOS Benson, Former Interim President Ernest Shonekan, one of the fathers of accounting in Nigeria, Akintola Williams and brother Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams; Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, father of Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti; Nigerian television personality, Modupe Afolabi Jemi-Alade popularly known as Art Alade and his singer son Dare Art-Alade and Abolore Akande aka 9ice, among many others.
This story was first published on May 14, 2020.
Cover design by Tobi Yinka
