BAI SHERBRO KPANA LEWIS (ca. 1830-1912)
SHERBRO CHIEF AND OPPONENT OF COLONIAL RULE
Bai Sherbro Kpana Lewis was the last great ruler of all the Sherbro. He exercised strong influence, if not authority, over all Sherbro rulers by the end of the last century. Part of his fame rested in his pervasive use of the Poro, a secret society, to oppose Bai Sherbro Kpana Lewis the incoming colonialists.
He was considered so powerful that, while Bai Bureh was allowed to return from exile after the 1898 Rebellion, Kpana Lewis continued to be held in exile in the Gold Coast, where he died in 1912.Kpana Lewis was the last Sherbro ruler who came close to realising the power of the Kong Kuba, the title of the King of all the Sherbro. His grandfather, the last Kong Kuba had signed a treaty ceding Sherbro country to the British in 1825. But the British did not exercise any direct authority over the Sherbro until the end of the century. Though many of the provinces of the Sherbro Kingdom had become autonomous by the time Kpana Lewis assumed office in 1879, he was able to bring quite a few of them back under the authority of the Bai Sherbro. This he did by using the enormous power of the Poro, of which he was a leading member. Poro is reported to have spread into the interior of Sierra Leone from Yoni on Sherbro Island, which was the capital of the Sherbro Kingdom and where Kpana Lewis resided. He thus came to restore something of the old glory of the Kong Kuba, and to regain authority over former mainland provinces of the once powerful Sherbro Kingdom.
When the British proclaimed a Protectorate in 1896, many of the terms of the Protectorate Ordinance were distasteful to the local rulers. Above all was the house tax. Kpana Lewis was one of the few leaders who actually led a deputation of chiefs to Freetown to protest against the tax. While the Governor informed him that Sherbro was in the Colony and was therefore unaffected by the tax, he informed the other chiefs they would have to comply with the new regulations. Kpana Lewis did not sit back and leave the other rulers to continue protesting alone because his own territory was not involved, although some chiefs did just that. Kpana Lewis, on his return to Yoni, used the Poro to give force to his disgust with the colonial measures.The Poro traditionally had a role of ensuring concerted action for political or economic purposes. It could as easily place a ban on war as on the harvest, a ban which no one dared disobey. It thus fulfilled the role of a modern judiciary system and police force. It was this that Kpana Lewis now used to effect a boycott of trade with Europeans and Krio traders, the latter being seen as accomplices of the colonialists. When Alldridge, the District Commissioner, called a meeting of chiefs in the area to warn them against this kind of action, one of them, the Sokong of Imperri defiantly said that he had to confer with Kpana Lewis, whom he regarded as his overlord, before deliberating with the District Commissioner. So great then was the Bai Sherbro’s power and influence over these rulers that they were willing to openly defy powerful British officials in favour of Kpana Lewis’ authority. The British then quickly passed a law making it a criminal offence to use the Poro to restrain trade.
When the 1898 Rebellion broke out in the South on April 27, 1898, nothing could convince the District Commissioner that Kpana Lewis was not the brain behind the resistance. With no evidence connecting Kpana Lewis with the Rebellion, he was detained as a suspect and subsequently exiled to the Gold Coast with Bai Bureh and Nyagua. The British then installed their own nominee, Fama Yani, as Bai Sherbro. Fearing that if Kpana Lewis returned, his presence would lead to the overthrow of Fama Yani, the British refused to allow his return, thought Bai Bureh was ultimately brought back home. In spite of protests by Kpana Lewis’ son, called Kong Kuba, and of intervention by the Anti-Slavery Society in London, the British Government held him in the Gold Coast where he died after more than a decade in exile.
