LAGOS: A CITY OF PARADOXES

SONNY IROCHE writes that Lagos embodies Nigeria’s contradictions in their most vivid form

Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous city and the heart beat of its economy, is a land of paradoxes. At once a city of staggering wealth and crushing poverty, of tradition and modernity, of deep religiosity and dizzying secular ambition, Lagos embodies Nigeria’s contradictions in their most vivid form. With a population exceeding 20 million, it is one of the fastest-growing urban centers in the world and Africa’s commercial capital. Yet, beneath its skyscrapers and ceaseless traffic, Lagos retains the echoes of its beginnings as a modest fishing village named Eko, founded by the Awori people.

Long before the arrival of Europeans or the rise of colonial authority, Lagos was the domain of the Awori, a subgroup of the Yoruba people. Oral traditions place their migration from Ile-Ife, the spiritual homeland of the Yoruba, southwards to the swampy islands and lagoons of the Atlantic coast. Here, they established a settlement they called Eko, meaning “camp” or “war camp.”

The Awori were fishermen, hunters, and small-scale farmers. They lived off the abundant waters of the Lagos lagoon, which provided fish, oysters, and trade routes. Their spiritual life revolved around Orisha worship, particularly deities associated with water such as Yemoja.

The first major transformation of Eko came through the expansionist ambitions of the Benin Kingdom. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the mighty Benin Empire extended its influence westward toward the lagoons. The Oba of Benin dispatched a war party to assert control over Eko, installing a governor, Ashipa, to rule on his behalf.

Ashipa became the progenitor of the Obaship of Lagos, which though Yoruba in identity, retained Benin ritual influences. To this day, coronation rites of the Oba of Lagos bear marks of this Benin heritage.

Portuguese explorers, arriving in the late 1470s, were the first Europeans to make contact with the settlement, renaming it Lagos after a port town in southern Portugal. They established early trade relations, exchanging firearms, textiles, and alcohol for enslaved persons and ivory. This was the beginning of Lagos’ entanglement with the Atlantic slave trade.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Lagos became a notorious hub of the slave trade. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and British merchants made Lagos one of West Africa’s most active slave ports. It was alleged that the Obas of Lagos often collaborated in this trade, enriching themselves through alliances with Europeans.

By the late eighteenth century, Britain outlawed the slave trade and deployed its navy to suppress it, bringing it into direct conflict with Lagos.

In 1851, Britain bombarded Lagos, deposing Oba Kosoko and reinstating his rival Oba Akitoye, who was sympathetic to British anti-slavery policies. In 1861, Oba Dosunmu signed the Treaty of Cession, formally handing Lagos to the British Crown.

As a colony, Lagos attracted missionaries, traders, and returnee communities such as the Saro (Sierra Leonean Yoruba freed slaves) and Aguda (Afro-Brazilians). They brought Christianity, Western education, and cosmopolitan values, profoundly transforming Lagos society.

Among the most transformative were the Saro. Figures such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther, himself once enslaved, returned to become the first African Anglican Bishop in 1864, translating the Bible into Yoruba and promoting literacy.

The Saro also produced the first Nigerian lawyer, Christopher Sapara Williams, who in 1879 was called to the English Bar. He became a prominent advocate for constitutional reform in Lagos.

Another towering Saro descendant was Herbert Macaulay, grandson of Ajayi Crowther. Educated in England as a surveyor, Macaulay returned to Lagos to champion nationalism, founding the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) in 1923 and editing the Lagos Daily News, where he openly criticized colonial policies.

Other intellectuals like Spencer Savage Williams and their contemporaries helped form Lagos’ early professional middle class, founding debating clubs, newspapers, and civic associations. These men and women laid the intellectual foundations of modern Nigeria.

Religion has always been central to Lagos’ identity. Yoruba traditional religion coexisted with Islam, introduced by Hausa traders in the eighteenth century, and Christianity, revitalized by the Saro, Aguda, and European missions. Churches such as the Holy Cross Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral became landmarks of Lagos’ spiritual life.

Despite colonialism and independence, the Oba of Lagos remained a powerful traditional figure. The lineage, beginning with Ashipa, produced rulers like Oba Dosunmu, who ceded Lagos, and Oba Akitoye, who allied with Britain. Today, Oba Rilwan Akiolu I, crowned in 2003, continues the dynasty, representing cultural continuity in a rapidly changing metropolis.

The twentieth century transformed Lagos into a melting pot. Migrants from every Nigerian ethnic group, Igbo, Hausa, Ijaw, Tiv, arrived, as did Lebanese, Indian, and lately Chinese business communities. The oil boom of the 1970s accelerated expansion, birthing Lagos’ sprawl across the mainland and making it Nigeria’s cultural capital, home to Afrobeat, Nollywood, and African literature.

Today, Lagos is a megacity of over twenty million people. It generates more than 30 percent of Nigeria’s GDP and houses its busiest port and financial institutions. But it also struggles with overpopulation, flooding, and inequality. Still, Lagos endures, absorbing migrants, reinventing itself, and projecting Nigerian culture globally.

The history of Lagos is the history of Nigeria in miniature: indigenous Awori roots, Benin political imprints, Portuguese trade, the horrors of slavery, the transformations of colonialism, the intellectual ferment of the Saro and Aguda, and the restless dynamism of migration and cosmopolitanism.

It is a city of kings and commoners, mosques and cathedrals, sprawling slums and gleaming towers. Above all, Lagos is a city of survival and ambition. To know Lagos is to glimpse the possibilities and perils of Nigeria’s future.

  Iroche was a Senior Academic Fellow at the African Studies Centre of the University of Oxford, 2022-2023