History of Lagos
[2] Lagos means "lakes" in Portuguese, the language of the first Europeans to arrive at the land already inhabited by the Awori who are a sub-ethnic group of the Yoruba people.
[4] To differentiate the modern settlement from the older kingdom in the area, the name "Onim" has been applied to the latter by some historians such as Toby Green.
During this crisis, the Olofin lead the Awori in repeatedly beating back the invaders sent by the King of Benin and soon gained great fame for his successful defence of the Island.
[16] It's also probable that the city was named after the homonymous coastal town of Lagos, Portugal, in the Algarve region, where sailors and settlers would have departed.
This allowed Lagos to assume the leading economic position regionally, becoming the most important market in the Yoruba territories as well as growing substantially.
Local merchants strongly opposed the intended move, and deposed and exiled the king, and installed Akitoye's brother Kosoko as Oba.
[3] Exiled to Europe, Akitoye met with British authorities, who had banned slave trading in 1807, and who therefore decided to support the deposed Oba to regain his throne.
In 1849, Britain appointed John Beecroft Consul of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, a position he held (along with his governorship of Fernando Po) until his death in 1854.
[27] At the time of Beecroft's appointment, the Kingdom of Lagos (under Oba Kosoko) was in the western part of the Consulate of the Bights of Benin and Biafra and was a key slave trading port.
[31][4][32] The Royal Navy originally used the port of the Spanish island of Fernando Po (now Bioko, Equatorial Guinea) off Nigeria as an extraterritorial base of operations.
Following threats from Kosoko and the French who were positioned at Whydah, a decision was made by Lord Palmerston (British Prime Minister) who noted in 1861, "the expediency of losing no time in assuming the formal Protectorate of Lagos".
[34] William McCoskry, the Acting Consul in Lagos with Commander Bedingfield convened a meeting with Oba Dosunmu on 30 July 1861 aboard HMS Prometheus where Britain's intent was explained and a response to the terms were required by August 1861.
[42] In Lekki, near Lagos, the Nigerian Bitumen Corporation under businessman John Simon Bergheim found oil during test drilling in 1908.
In addition to letters and parcels, they also carried cargo and about 100 passengers and also stopped in Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Gold Coast (Ghana).
[56] High school graduates could be trained by the railway company as locomotive drivers or technicians in six-year courses - during which they worked in the workshop mentioned above and in the construction department, for example.
[56] For the trainees in Lagos, the railway company had specially provided a discarded but still functioning steam locomotive, which they could use to learn how it worked.
In an adventurous way, British special agents on the nearby but Spanish and thus neutral island of Bioko captured Italian and German supply ships for U-boats in the South Atlantic and brought them to the home port of Lagos.
[57] The incident - in which no shot was fired - almost led to Franco's Spain entering the war alongside the Third Reich and fascist Italy.
[59] An article on the strike in the Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria declared its main legacy to be "the need for mutual sobriety."
Due to corruption and incompetence of the central government under General Gowon, hundreds of ships with ordered cement deliveries - half of the world supply - were lying outside the port in 1974, causing chaotic scenes.
In 1982, the Shagari government reacted to Nigeria's lack of foreign currency by imposing import restrictions, which hampered production in Lagos in the 1980s.
Negotiations on a sale to a Nigerian group of companies, which began in 1992, failed to reach a conclusion because of internal political power struggles.
From January to February 1977, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) took place in Lagos (and in Kaduna).
This in turn has led to ever new records in box office takings in Nigeria (2009: "The Figurine", 2013: "Half of a Yellow Sun", 2016: "The Wedding Party").
The owner, Femi Osibona, demanded that the contractor replaced this pillar with a new, intact one and offered the construction workers breakfast for the extra work.
On 20 July 2014, a traveller from Liberia infected with Ebola arrived at the airport in Lagos and was diagnosed after being admitted to a private hospital.
The rapidly established Emergency Operations Centre, which used an Incident Management System (IMS) to coordinate response and consolidate decision-making, was instrumental in containing the outbreak in Nigeria at an early stage and avoiding a disaster scenario.
[84] On 10 June 2021, Lagos received a standard gauge railway link with Nigeria's third largest city, Ibadan, including a modern central station, Mobolaji Johnson.
In 2022, the Nigerian Railway Corporation reported profitable operation of the Lagos-Ibadan line despite restrictions due to Covid epidemic.
[89] On 24 February 2024, the foundation stone was laid on Victoria Island for a multi-purpose arena that will seat 12,000 and provide a suitable stage for the booming entertainment industry.
