Niara Bely (c. 1790 – 1879), also known as Elizabeth Bailey Gomez, was a Luso-African queen who became a prominent businesswoman in nineteenth century Guinea.
[2] In 1809, she married the slave trader Stiles Edward Lightbourn who spent much of his time on voyages across the Atlantic.
[3] In 1841, when Benjamin Campbell was investigated for involvement in the slave trade, he freely admitted that he had done business with "Mrs Lightbourn", but said that he had only bought legitimate goods such as ivory, hides, wax, gold and coffee.
[5]: 21 In 1842, Niara Bely and her colleague Mary Faber united their armies to help their allies, the Fula, to plunder the Susu capital, Thia, when weakened by throne fighting, and installing their own candidate there, which benefited Fula, Faber, and Lightburn.
Mary Faber de Sanger, who perceived the treaty as a hostile act from the lower river trader in alliance with Freetown's "mulatto" and also as a way of releasing the lower river's Susa tribe from her allied Fula tribe power, which would hurt her business, closed alliance with Niara Bely and Charles Wilkinson, and together they pillaged the Susu region by the lower river.
A mission who was present at the time wrote "The infirmities of age had pressed heavily upon her ever since her baptism, and at last she died somewhat suddenly".