Colonial Footprints: Lagos, Then and Now

"“Once upon a time, when men were still in romance with nature, the lagoon nourished the social, commercial and even political being of the city and people of Lagos.”"
Jahman Anikulapo, 2005

"The topography of Lagos is dominated by its system of islands, sandbars, and lagoons. The city itself sprawls over three main islands: Lagos Island, Lagos Mainland, and Victoria Island, connected to each other by a system of bridges."

"Lagos emerged during the colonial period as a heterogeneous town populated by groups of people of various origins. This gave the town its eclectic character, with increasing social stratification and contrasting lifestyles."

"The city confronts one with the great psychological socio-cultural divide between “the Island” and “the Mainland”, two deep “social topography” concepts which dominate even routine discussions of the place, like East Side and West Side in New York or North London and South London."

"The historical core of the town, Lagos Island, developed from the main sub-communities who lived in relatively distinct districts. The European community represented a small group (300 people by 1901). This community established the physical foundations of the city, which consisted of warehouses and government buildings built along the Marina and around the racecourse."

"Lagos became the obvious place to develop as the capital of the new Colony and Southern Protectorate inaugurated in 1906, and after 1914 naturally became the main location of the first capital of United Nigeria. The period after 1906 was an important period of further development on Lagos Island, of buildings still in existence such as the Supreme Court ..."

"... the Old Secretariat and the Government Printer on Broad Street. There was also the first Government Secondary School, Kings College, both of which were located by the racecourse in which polo was played in the central area of the course, and which from the time it was laid out in 1859 was a central feature of British colonial Lagos."

"Unlike most other port cities of the Atlantic coast, in which segregation schemes were introduced between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for decades there was no official segregation scheme in Lagos."

"After Lagos was made the capital in 1914, a classification of Nigerian cities was proposed in 1921. Lagos was the only city belonging to the ‘Class A township’, which combined a residential area reserved for Europeans (Ikoyi) and a commercial area in which Europeans lived, worked, traded and interacted with Africans (Lagos Island)."

"It was impossible to relocate either the Western companies or the African traders and inhabitants beyond the historical core of the city. But in the ‘next-door’ island of Ikoyi, a European Reservation Area was laid out in 1928 exclusively to accommodate the increasing number of Europeans (which grew from 301 in 1901 to 4 000 in 1931)."

"The building that became the Government House, and then State House after independence, went through a number of transformations; the version most recognized was built in time for Lugard to occupy as Governor-General in 1914. It housed figures such as Clifford, Cameron, Bourdillon and the last Governors-General, Robertson and – after independence – Azikiwe."

"Governor Carter (1891-97) had the vision to push through the railway, the great project of the 1890s, which opened its first stretch to Ibadan as the century turned. The year 1900 saw the opening of the Iddo rail terminus, but also the first version of Carter Bridge (carrying pedestrians and, afterwards, the steam tram), which gave the development of Lagos Island, as the hub of the capital, a tremendous boost."

"As development continued in Lagos, British architecture prevailed and new types of buildings were introduced. These were usually either imported 18th century houses of the English countryside or prefabricated constructions with deep verandas and overhanging eaves."

"After the bubonic plague of the late 1920s, the Lagos Executive Development Board was set up in 1931 and was responsible for some of the earliest planned developments on the Mainland such as Yaba. These were also added to and partly reconstructed in the later colonial period, as was the new model suburb of Surulere."

"Much of the history of Lagos is that of its economy, in the context of political, social and cultural change. Economic transformation is thus one of the most important forces to have had an impact on the city, its society, its landscape as well as its “look”, which forms an essential par of the quest for the city's soul. 

The expansion of the city's political economy has led to growing wealth, which in turn has brought a range of new aspirations for modernity that has followed in the wake of colonization."