The history of Lagos in ten minutes: from Eko to megacity

Lagos is one of the biggest cities in Africa, and most of its story fits on a few islands and the shore of a lagoon. Here it is in about ten minutes: where the name Eko comes from, how the city got its Portuguese name, the slave trade and the British, the years as Nigeria’s capital, and how it became the megacity it is today. Dates are checked against the sources at the bottom of the page; where historians disagree, we say so.

Before Lagos: the Awori and Eko

The first people to settle Lagos Island were the Awori, a Yoruba subgroup, in the fifteenth century. The island was a farmstead beside the lagoon, and the indigenous name for the city, Èkó, is often said to come from a Yoruba word for a farm or hamlet. Lagosians still call their city Eko today.

Benin

The Kingdom of Benin, to the east, became powerful in Lagos. Accounts differ on exactly when and how, but by around 1600 a dispute between the Awori and merchants linked to Benin gave Benin an opening, and it set up a military post on Lagos Island. So early Lagos was a Yoruba settlement shaped by the power of a neighbouring kingdom.

The Portuguese, and the name “Lagos”

Portuguese sailors reached Lagos Island in 1472. They called it Onim, and later Lagos, the Portuguese word for lakes, probably after the town of Lagos in Portugal, a base for their voyages down the African coast. The name stuck in every language except Yoruba, where the city is still Eko.

A slave port

This is the hardest part of the story, and it should be told plainly. The first recorded purchase of enslaved people at Lagos by English traders was in 1652. In the 1760s, Oba Akinsemoyin opened Lagos to the Atlantic slave trade, and by the early 1800s Lagos had become one of the biggest slave-exporting ports in the region.

The British arrive: 1851 and 1861

Britain had outlawed the slave trade and used it as a reason to intervene. After a struggle for the throne between Kosoko and Akitoye, the Royal Navy bombarded Lagos in 1851, drove out Kosoko and installed Akitoye, who signed a treaty against the slave trade in 1852. Ten years later Britain went further. On 6 August 1861, under threat of bombardment, Oba Dosunmu signed the Lagos Treaty of Cession, handing Lagos to Britain in exchange for a pension. Lagos was declared a British colony on 5 March 1862.

Returnees, railways and bridges

Colonial Lagos grew fast. Freed people and their descendants came back from Sierra Leone (the Saro) and from Brazil and Cuba (the Aguda or Amaro), bringing churches, schools, trades and architecture that you can still see in old Lagos Island. The railway to Ibadan opened in 1901, the same year the first Carter Bridge linked Lagos Island to the mainland. In 1906 Lagos became the capital of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria.

Capital of Nigeria: 1914 to 1991

Losing the capital did not slow Lagos down. It stayed Nigeria’s commercial heart, home to the country’s biggest and busiest ports at Apapa and Tin Can Island.

The megacity

Nobody agrees on how many people live in Lagos, and the gap is enormous. The 2006 census counted about 8 million in metropolitan Lagos, a figure that has long been disputed. Recent estimates run from about 17 million to 21 million, depending on who is counting and where they draw the city’s edge. Either way, it is one of the largest cities in Africa.

The city is loosely divided into the Island and the Mainland. The Island holds the old town, the business district and the Oba’s palace, Iga Idunganran. The Mainland holds most of the people and most of the industry, from Ikeja to the port districts of Apapa and Ajegunle. Three major bridges tie them together, one of them the Third Mainland Bridge. New transport has started to change the map too: the first phase of the Blue Line rail opened to passengers in September 2023, and the Red Line began regular service in October 2024.

Five things to remember

1. Eko is the Yoruba name; Lagos is the Portuguese one.
2. The Awori settled first, and Benin power shaped the early kingdom.
3. Lagos was a major slave port until the British intervened in 1851.
4. Oba Dosunmu ceded Lagos to Britain on 6 August 1861.
5. Lagos was Nigeria’s capital from 1914 until the move to Abuja in December 1991.

History, and a story

AJ Cities is a free browser game set in today’s Lagos, in a fictional estate on the edge of Ajegunle, where Navy Town meets Kirikiri. Its characters are invented, and no real historical figure appears in it. But its story starts with a very Lagos kind of history: a man called AJ, deported from London to a city he barely knows, sitting on the veranda bench of a face-me-I-face-you two weeks after landing. If this page made you curious about the city, start AJ’s story or read the full story.

Why is Lagos called Eko?

Eko is the original Yoruba name, often said to come from a Yoruba word for a farmstead. Lagos is the name the Portuguese gave the island, after the Portuguese word for lakes.

When did Lagos become a British colony?

Oba Dosunmu signed the Lagos Treaty of Cession on 6 August 1861, and Lagos was declared a colony on 5 March 1862.

When did Lagos stop being the capital of Nigeria?

The federal government formally moved to Abuja on 12 December 1991. The decision to build Abuja was taken in 1976.

Who were the first people in Lagos?

The Awori, a Yoruba subgroup, who settled Lagos Island in the fifteenth century.