The scale of his personal fortune and the respect he commanded were highlighted in the landmark case of Montaiganc and Cyprien Fabre & Co. v. Shitta (1890), which underscored his role as a financier and influential figure in the economic landscape of Lagos Colony.

The case arose from a series of loans amounting to £6,000 (equivalent to approximately £850,000 to £1 million in 2024) advanced by Shitta to Giuseppe Del Grande, an agent acting on behalf of Cyprien Fabre & Co., a French trading firm with significant interests on the West African coast.

The court’s examination of the case not only illustrated the legal complexities of agency and commercial partnerships in colonial trade but also highlighted Shitta’s pivotal position in the region’s economic networks.

His ability to extend such significant sums without immediate financial returns demonstrated both the scale of his wealth and his integrity, marking him as one of the foremost figures in the economic and social history of 19th-century West Africa.

He accumulated significant wealth trading such goods as palm oil, ivory, kola nuts, egusi, gum copal, hides and clothes, and built a pious reputation.

[9] As evidence of his political clout, acting colonial Governor Denton identified Shitta as a powerful force resisting the supervision of Muslim schools under the British Board of Education.

They were the pioneer southern Nigerian traders in kola, a cash crop that later emerged as a viable and important export commodity for the western region in the early twentieth century.

[14] The mosque featured Afro-Brazilian themed architecture created by Senor Joao Baptista Da Costa, a Brazilian returnee to Lagos who was assisted by an indigenous builder named Sanusi Aka.

Others in attendance included Oba Oyekan I, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Abdullah Quilliam (who represented Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire), and prominent Lagosian Christians such as James Pinson Labulo Davies, John Otunba Payne, and Richard Beale Blaize.