Lagos makes more sense once you know how it got here: a fishing settlement on a lagoon that became a port, a colony, a capital, and then the largest city in Africa’s most populous country.
Eko
The first settlers on the islands of the lagoon were Awori, a Yoruba people, and the place they founded is still called Eko in Yoruba. Later the Kingdom of Benin extended its influence here, and the line of the Oba of Lagos, whose palace, Iga Idunganran, stands on Lagos Island, traces back to that period. The name “Lagos” is Portuguese, from the lagoons.
Port and slave trade
From the eighteenth century Lagos was a major slave port. The trade, and the British campaign to end it, shaped the city: Britain attacked Lagos in 1851, and annexed it as a colony in 1861.
Colony and capital
Under British rule Lagos grew as the administrative centre and chief port of what became Nigeria. Returnees from Brazil and Sierra Leone settled on the Island and left their mark in its architecture. At independence in 1960 Lagos was the capital, and Lagos State was created in 1967.
Capital no longer
The federal government moved the capital to Abuja, formally in 1991. Lagos lost the ministries but kept the money: the ports, the banks, the companies, the media and the music stayed, and so did the people arriving from every part of the country.
The megacity
Bridges tied the islands to the mainland, the city spread north towards Ikorodu and Ogun State and east along the Lekki peninsula, and new land was built on the sea at Eko Atlantic. How many people live in Lagos now is itself disputed, because Nigeria has not held a census since 2006.
Lagos and Nigeria in numbers Map of Lagos Lagos neighbourhoods Day trips: Badagry