PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Princess Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies

Born Omoba Aina in Oke-Odan, Ogun State, to a royal family of the Egbado clan in 1843, she was captured at age five during a raid by Dahomey (Republic of Benin)  soldiers and taken to the court of King Ghezo to serve as a slave. 

She was renamed Sarah Forbes Bonetta by  British Emissary Captain Fredrick E. Forbes, who took her away to England after convincing the King to present her as a gift to Queen Victoria; his ship was the HMS Bonetta. The Queen, who made Sarah her godchild,  arranged for her adoption by a middle-class family, her education at the Church Missionary Society, along with a regular allowance. 

At 18, with the Queen's permission, Sarah married 31-year-old James Pinson Labulo  Davies- a wealthy Yoruba businessman living in Britain and the son of liberated Yoruba slaves. The union produced three children, the firstborn, a girl named after Queen Victoria. Sarah died on the 15th of August, 1880, in Funchal, Portugal.  

Her first daughter, Victoria Matilda Davies, married Dr John K Randle, a politician and one of the first British-educated doctors in Nigeria. Her second daughter, Stella Davies Coker, was a companion of the nationalist, Herbert Macaulay- a relationship which produced a daughter, Sarah Abigail Idowu Macaulay. 

Sarah Abigail Idowu Macaulay, later on, married a Ghanian, Julius Gordon Kwasi Adadevoh. Their son, physician and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos- Dr Babatunde Kwaku Adadevoh- was the father of the late Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, who diagnosed and heroically contained the spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria in 2014.