Brass

Brass is a historic town in Bayelsa State, southern Nigeria, situated on the Gulf of Guinea at the mouth of the Brass River in the Niger Delta. In the early nineteenth century it developed into a major trading port for European merchants and a depot for the transatlantic slave trade under the Nembe Kingdom. The Nembe branch of the Ijo people originally established the settlement as a fishing village, but European traders soon utilized its concealed delta ports to ship enslaved people to Brazil and Cuba. The Nembe rulers deployed war canoes into the interior, particularly through Igbo territory, to capture people in exchange for Western cloth, tools, spirits, and firearms.

By the mid-1800s Brass had shifted into a significant collecting point for palm oil and kernels under the Oil Rivers Protectorate and later the Niger Coast Protectorate. Its prominence eventually declined after the Royal Niger Company established its own port at Akassa. In modern times Brass functions primarily as a fishing port and local trade center for agricultural produce such as palm oil, cassava, taro, and plantains. The local economy remains anchored in farming and fishing, supplemented by nearby oil and gas installations.

Today the town of Brass is home to roughly fifteen thousand people within an area of about fifteen square kilometers, while the surrounding local government area contains approximately two hundred thousand residents. Colonial-era consulate buildings still stand as reminders of its commercial past. Waterways continue to link Brass with other parts of the Niger Delta, preserving its role as a settlement of both historical and economic significance in the region.