A Green Party candidate campaigning for Britain to pay trillions of pounds in slavery reparations is herself descended from a Nigerian royal family with a documented history of slave trading, it has emerged.
Antoinette Fernandez, who holds the role of reparations officer within the party’s Global Majority Greens group, is standing for election in the Lea Bridge ward in Hackney, east London. She has publicly called for British taxpayers to fund reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, arguing that politicians who oppose the idea “show an appalling arrogance.”
Yet through her mother, Abiola Dosunmu — the Queen Mother of Lagos — Ms Fernandez is a descendant of the Obas, or kings, of Lagos, some of whom historians describe as “major” slave traders who made “lucrative commissions from slave deals.” According to one historical account, one of her ancestors personally owned 1,400 slaves, while another brought enslaved people back from Brazil to work on construction projects in Lagos. The family is said to have used wealth accumulated through the slave trade to purchase luxury goods including velvet clothes and royal robes.
Ms Fernandez is also the daughter of the late Antonio Deinde Fernandez, a business magnate and UN ambassador who built a fortune in oil, gas and mining. His reported net worth stood at $8.7 billion at the time of his death in 2015. She has herself described her background as “privileged” and was educated at Millfield School in Somerset, where fees exceed £60,000 a year.
The revelations have drawn sharp criticism from political opponents. Reform UK’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham called Ms Fernandez “the ultimate hypocrite,” saying: “While Brits are crushed by the cost-of-living crisis, she demands we fork out billions more in slave reparations, even though Britain has already spent tens of billions wiping out the slave trade.” Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said her candidacy “fits a pattern” for the Greens, adding: “The Greens are not a serious political force. They have been captured by hard-Left activism and student politics.”
The Green Party has rejected the criticism, describing the reporting of Ms Fernandez’s lineage as “racist” and a “bad-faith attempt to undermine the case for reparative justice.”
The controversy comes weeks after the United Nations voted in favour of former colonial powers paying reparations for slavery — a figure that a UN judge estimated in 2023 could reach as high as £18 trillion. Following that vote, Ms Fernandez said: “Britain and the US in particular need to acknowledge the inhumane crimes they inflicted on the African people for centuries and the ongoing impact of those crimes on the Global South.”
Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and subsequently committed significant naval resources and funds to ending the practice internationally. Ms Fernandez previously stood for the Greens at the 2024 general election and made a bid for the party’s deputy leadership in 2025.
