Lagos

Lagos began as a Yoruba settlement on an island in the lagoon, settled by Awori people and known to them as Eko. From the late 15th century Portuguese traders reached the harbour and gave it the name Lagos, and the town grew as a port of the Kingdom of Benin's western reach, ruled by its own oba. In the first half of the 19th century it was one of the busiest slave-trading ports on the coast.

In 1851 a British naval force intervened in a dispute over the throne and bombarded the town; ten years later, in 1861, the oba ceded Lagos and it became a British colony. Freed slaves returning from Brazil and Cuba, the Amaro, settled in what became the Brazilian Quarter and left a distinctive architecture of storeyed houses with decorated facades, while Sierra Leonean Saro returnees formed an educated elite. Lagos became the capital of the colony of Nigeria and remained the national capital after independence in 1960.

The oil boom of the 1970s pulled in migrants from every part of the country and the city spread across the lagoon and the mainland far faster than any plan could follow. The federal capital moved to Abuja in 1991, but Lagos kept the banks, the ports and the media. Since the 2000s the state government has pushed large infrastructure schemes — bus lanes, bridges, urban rail and the reclaimed district of Eko Atlantic — while the population has continued to climb.

Lagos is the cultural motor of West Africa. Fela Kuti created Afrobeat here in the late 1960s and turned his Shrine into a platform against military rule; his sons Femi and Seun still perform in the family's New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, and the city's studios now produce the Afrobeats sound of Wizkid, Burna Boy, Davido and Tems that fills clubs worldwide. Nollywood, one of the most prolific film industries anywhere, is largely made and screened here.

The art scene is strong and growing, with commercial galleries on the islands, the Nike Art Gallery's several floors in Lekki, an art fair each year and the arts programme at Freedom Park. Literature has deep roots too: much of modern Nigerian publishing runs through the city.

Traditional life continues alongside all this. The Oba of Lagos holds court at Iga Idunganran, the white-robed Eyo masquerades come out for the funeral rites of important figures, and Christian churches and mosques stand side by side, often within one family. Weekends belong to the owambe — the party for a wedding, birthday or funeral, where guests wear aso ebi in matching cloth, live bands play and money is sprayed over the dancers. Lagosians are direct, fast-talking and proud of the hustle their city demands, and Nigerian Pidgin is the language that crosses every group.

Lagos State counted about 9 million people at the 2006 census, and estimates in 2025 put the built-up city at between 17 and 21 million, making it the most populous urban area in Africa. Most residents live on the mainland — Ikeja, Agege, Mushin, Yaba, Surulere, Ajegunle — and many commute daily to the islands where much of the formal work is.

The economy is the most diversified in Nigeria: banking and fintech, the Apapa and Tin Can ports that handle much of the country's imports, oil company head offices, Nollywood, music, advertising and an enormous informal sector of traders, mechanics and artisans. The Dangote refinery on the Lekki coast has added heavy industry to the mix.

The day starts before dawn to beat the go-slow, and many people spend three or four hours a day in traffic. Generators run where the grid fails, water and drainage are uneven, and flooding after heavy rain is a recurring problem in a city built barely above sea level. Housing costs on the islands are extreme and the gap between them and the mainland is the city's defining social fact. Conversation since 2023 has turned on inflation, fuel prices and the cost of getting to work.

Lagos eats everything Nigeria makes, and its own speciality is ewa agoyin: soft mashed beans served with a dark, oily fried-pepper sauce and agege bread, a dense white loaf sold in plastic wrappers. Amala, the dark swallow of yam flour, comes with ewedu, a slippery jute-leaf soup, and gbegiri made from beans, usually with goat meat or beef — the standard order in a buka, the no-frills canteen found on every mainland street.

Ofada rice, unpolished and local, is served with ayamase, a green pepper stew loaded with assorted meats and wrapped in leaves. Jollof rice appears at every celebration, and pounded yam goes with egusi, made from melon seeds, or efo riro, a stew of leafy greens in palm oil. Breakfast is often akara bean fritters, moin moin steamed bean pudding, or pap.

Evening belongs to the grills. Suya — thin beef skewers rubbed with the peppery spice mix yaji — is cut on newspaper at roadside stalls, and asun, smoked goat tossed with chilli and onion, is a bar staple. Fresh fish, croaker or tilapia, is grilled whole at the beach bars along the Lekki coast. To drink there is cold beer, palm wine from the countryside, zobo made from hibiscus, and chapman, the bittersweet red mixer that every Lagos bar makes its own way.