By Samson Fidimaye
Wars raged between tribes; Fulani slave raiders descended from the north; Portuguese dealers waited along the coast. Amid this violent convergence stood a 12-year-old boy—Ajayi—whose life was about to change forever.
In 1821, Ajayi and his entire village were captured by Fulani raiders. Alongside his family, he was forced into bondage and exchanged through a chain of brutal, profit-driven hands before being sold to Portuguese slave traders. The conflict and illegal commerce had reduced a royal descendant, the grandson of King Abiodun,1 to human cargo.
He was born Yoruba, sold into slavery at age 12,
rose to become the first African Anglican bishop,
and pioneered Bible translation into Nigerian languages.
Ajayi himself recounted the ordeal in a now famous letter he wrote in 1837 to Rev. Williams Jowett, then the secretary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society:
“I suppose sometime about the commencement of the year 1821, I was in my native
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“Abiodun,” Britannica, accessed online Aug. 8, 2025.
“Ajayi Crowther’s 182 Year Old Letter: ‘How I Was Captured, Sold into Slavery,’” The News Nigeria, Aug. 25, 2019.
“Ways of Ending Slavery,” in Slavery (Sociology), Britannica, accessed online Aug. 8, 2025.
Crowther, quoted in Andrew F. Walls, “Crowther, Samuel Ajayi, Foremost African Christian of the Nineteenth Century,” AfricanOrbit News, Dec. 3, 2014.
Emmanuel A. S. Egbunu, “Sustaining the Missionary Legacy of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther,” July 27, 2021, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), transcript.
Samson Fidimaye writes from Osun, Nigeria. He and his wife Juliet run Advent Family Missions Nigeria-Africa. Follow their ministry on Facebook.