Aro confederacy and Oyo empire were the biggest slave traders in the Nigeria area, and they were trading their own. No Hausa kingdom was a major player in the transatlantic slave trade because they don't live close to coastal areas. Most of the slaves were based locally. Hausas and Yorubas had no contact with Igbos prior to British colonization.
You done pissed him off now. You don't even want to let him know that the Hausa were the ones that stopped the slave trade in Igboland. In fact an Igbo PHD named Ozodi Osuji wrote about it:
"...For the purposes of Igbo land, they arranged with the Ijaw and Efik (at Bonney and Calaba respectively) to sell to them Africans.
The Ijaw and Efik first sold their people to them. Later, the Ijaw and Efik arranged with a segment of Igbos closest to them called Aro (their home is Arochukwu but they are settled all over Alaigbo...including in my very compound, indeed, some people say that yours truly is an Aro!).
The Aro arranged for Abriba, Abam, and Ohafia and Ngwa people to roam all over Alaigbo capturing slaves and matching them to Arochukwu and from there sold them to Efik people who sold them to the Portuguese at Calaba.
Some slaves were sold from Owerri (what is now called Owerri town was a slave market called owere...it has been taken, slaves have been taken).
The slaves sold at Owerri were marched to Bonny (via Igwe Ocha, now called Port Harcourt) and sold to Ijaw people, who sold them to the Portuguese.
This whole thing began around 1500 AD and lasted until 1902. In 1902 captain Frederick Lugard with Hausa solders (he called them West African Frontier Army...Lugard was part of the British Army in India and was discharged and was unemployed and roaming the streets of London looking for job and one day saw a classified AD asking for ex-soldiers to come join George Goldie's Royal Niger Company and he joined up...and the rest, as they say, is history, he worked his way to becoming the governor general of Nigeria, including arranging the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914...the British later took Nigeria away from the Royal Niger company and decided to rule it directly and appointed Lugard as their governor (Lugard also worked in East Africa and in Hong Kong; he implemented the indirect rule system in Nigeria, using Hausa Emirs to rule Hausas, Yoruba Obas to rule Yorubas, Bini Obas to rule Bini folks and since Igbos do not have kings he appointed what he called Warrant Chiefs in most Igbo towns to rule them...the warrant chiefs were as corrupt as corrupt can be).
Lugard and his Hausa soldiers in 1902 destroyed the Arochukwu Long juju (oracle) and thereafter marched throughout Igbo land stopping slave trade; they came to Owerri, my area, in 1904 and fought with my people; my great, great grandfather, Njoku led his people in their war with Lugard; he was killed...you can read about it in a book by Professor Nwankwo of Nnsuka University on how the British conquered Igbo land.
In addition to having their mercenaries capture slaves for them, Aro people stationed so-called priest/judges in most Alaigbo villages...such as my folks who are priests in Owerri area, we are supposed to have been those Aro stationed in my area. The people brought their issues to the priest/judges to settle and the persons seeking Judicial help were often marched to Arochukwu and placed into a tunnel and those who did not come out were said to have been found guilty and swallowed by the gods...they were actually captured at the other end of the tunnel and sold into slavery to Efiks who sold them to Portuguese. The Aro god business was a slave selling racket, an elaborate ruse for selling Igbo into slavery!
Lugard destroyed Arochukwu and marched all over Alaigbo, as he said in his book, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, pacifying Igbo savages of the lower Niger... ."
Transatlantic slave trade and Igbos - ChatAfrik
