Lagos, Nigeria

Population: 15.9 million (2023 estimate)

Area: 385.9 square miles (999.5 square kilometers)

Founded: Late fifteenth century

Lagos is a major metropolitan area in the West African nation of Nigeria. The port, which sits on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean, is the largest city in Nigeria and, by some calculations, the African continent as well. The city originated as a fishing village before transforming into a slave-trading center and later a British colonial port. Today, Lagos is one of Africa’s primary economic hubs and among the fastest-growing urban centers in the world. Its rapid expansion has sparked controversy, as the nation has been accused of downplaying population statistics to mask its overcrowding and urban sprawl. At one time, Lagos was the capital of Nigeria, although it lost that designation in 1991.

Landscape

Lagos is located on Nigeria’s southern coast about 445 miles (176 kilometers) north of the equator. At one time, the city consisted of a series of islands and the mainland coastal region, but some of the islands that have since been connected to the mainland or to one another as part of land reclamation projects. The high rainfall in the area has created a swampy region of rivers, creeks, coastal sandbars, and lagoons, the largest of which—Lagos Lagoon—forms an inland body of water that stretches east of the city. The main channel though which the lagoon flows into the ocean also separates Lagos and Victoria, two of the city’s islands, from the mainland and creates its harbor.

The original inhabitants of the area in the fifteenth century settled on Lagos Island, which makes up the heart of the modern city. The island is home to the city’s business and market districts as well as a network of overcrowded slums. The main port area of Lagos is located in its western section on the mainland. The city also acts as the primary western hub of Nigeria’s railway and road systems.

Lagos has a hot, humid tropical climate characterized by several rainy seasons a year. The average annual temperature is 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius), with little seasonal variation. March is the hottest month with average temperatures of 83.5 Fahrenheit (28.1 Celsius), while August is the coolest month with a 77.4 Fahrenheit (25.2 Celsius) average. Year-round, the city’s rainfall averages 66.7 inches (1,694 millimeters), with June being the wettest month averaging 15.2 inches (386 millimeters) of rain. While the rain eases in August, the city experiences a second, less intense rainy season in October, with a monthly average just over 7.1 inches (180 millimeters). The driest month in Lagos is December, which averages 0.8 inches (20.3 millimeters) of rain.

People

According to estimates from the World Population Review, the population of Lagos was 15,945,912 in 2023. The city’s population has been a matter of debate, as its rapid growth has expanded its borders into the surrounding region. Lagos is sometimes referred to as a conurbation, an agglomeration of the main city and its surrounding urban areas. In 2006, the official estimate from the Nigerian government placed Lagos’ population at slightly more than 8 million—a figure deemed far too low by city and local leaders. Their estimates doubled the population to about 16 million. In 2015, another estimate calculated the population of Lagos at 21 million, which would have made it Africa’s most populous city. Regardless of the true figure, Lagos still has one of the highest growth rates of any city in the world, with its population increasing from 762,000 in 1960 to 4.7 million in 1990 and topping 10 million in 2009. According to estimates, Lagos’ population was growing at an annual rate of 4.44 percent in 2016. Some projections predict that the city’s population will double by 2050, making it one of the three largest cities in the world. By 2023, the population was growing by an estimated 3.63 percent.

Because Lagos is one of Africa’s main business centers, the city has a high percentage of wealthy residents, with more than six thousand people considered millionaires. At the same time, a large percent of Lagos’ population lives in poverty. The Yoruba people were the original inhabitants of the region and still make up a large part of the city’s population. Numerous minority populations are also in Lagos including British, American, Chinese, Lebanese, and Japanese. A number of city residents can also trace their ancestry to former enslaved peoples from the Americas in the nineteenth century.

Economy

Lagos is the main economic center in Nigeria and one of the most prominent on the continent of Africa. If Lagos were a country, its economic output for 2019 would rank it as Africa’s seventh-largest economy. Nigeria itself reported a 2021 gross domestic product (GDP) of 1.05 trillion dollars, which ranked twenty-fifth in the world. At the same time, its per capita GDP, a measure of personal income of a country, was 4,900 dollars per person, which was 178th worldwide.

The main industries in Lagos include a significant manufacturing presence, with electronic equipment, automobiles, metalworks, textiles, and pharmaceuticals among its primary output. As of 2023, Nigeria was the world’s fifteenth-largest oil-producing nation, producing an estimated 1.3 million barrels a day. About 90 percent of Nigeria’s 46.7 billion dollars in exports in 2017 came from the production of oil. This production almost all passed through the port of Lagos, which is one of the largest ports on the continent.

Lagos has also become the hub of a burgeoning Nigerian film industry nicknamed Nollywood. Based on terms of output, Nollywood’s 2,500 films produced in 2019 would make it the second-largest in the world, outpacing Hollywood and trailing only India’s film industry. While the industry’s film-making abilities are not as polished as those in the United States and India, the quality of Nollywood films improved in the late 2010s.

Landmarks

The tallest building in Lagos, and in all of Nigeria, is NECOM House, a 525-foot (160-meter) structure built in 1979. The building houses the headquarters of the nation’s primary telecommunications company, and its spire also doubles as a lighthouse. At 7.3 miles (11.8 kilometers), the Third Mainland Bridge connects Lagos Island to the mainland and is one of the longest bridges in Africa.

The National Arts Theatre is one of Nigeria’s signature performing arts center. The building itself features a distinctive architectural design resembling a curved, multi-layered crown. The 102-foot (31-meter) structure was built in the late 1970s. The Nigerian National Museum contains some of the nation’s most prized archaeological artifacts, including a more than 1,100-year-old terracotta sculpture of a human head known as the Jemaa Head, named after the village in which it was discovered.

The Iga Idunganran is the traditional palace of the Oba, or “ruler” of Lagos, a position that still exists but is largely ceremonial in the modern era. The palace was built in the fifteenth century and contains several ancient tombs and shrines that remain popular with tourists. Freedom Park on Lagos Island is one of the city’s main cultural centers, hosting numerous artistic and recreational events each year. The park was a former British colonial prison that was abandoned in the 1970s and repurposed as a cultural space in the 1990s.

Tafawa Balewa Square is located on Lagos Island and acts as the city’s ceremonial heart, capable of holding fifty thousand spectators for concerts and national events. The square was named after the nation’s former prime minister, who was killed in a 1966 military coup. Teslim Balogun Stadium can seat more than twenty-four thousand people and is the home to Lagos’ professional soccer team as well as Nigeria’s national rugby team. The stadium is also used by Nigeria’s national soccer team for international matches.

History

The first humans are believed to have inhabited the region around Lagos as far back as eleven thousand years ago. Cultures thrived in other parts of Nigeria for centuries, but the first known settlements on Lagos Island were founded in the fifteenth century by the Yoruba people. According to local tradition, a Yoruba hunter named Ogunfunminire left his people’s homeland and built a village north of Lagos. His descendants, known as the Idejo, eventually migrated south to Lagos Island and established a fishing and farming settlement in the area.

The Yoruba called the settlement Oko, or “farm” in their language. The first Portuguese explorers arrived in the area in the 1470s, calling the region Lago de Curamo. From this came the city’s modern name, as lagos is Portuguese for “lakes.” In the late sixteenth century, the area fell under the control of the Kingdom of Benin, which referred to the settlement as Eko, a name still used to refer to Lagos by some locals today. During this period, the city was governed by an Oba and became an integral part of the region’s slave trade.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Oba Akitoye attempted to ban the slave trade in Lagos but was instead deposed. Now exiled, Akitoye sought the aid of Great Britain, which had outlawed slavery in the early nineteenth century. In 1851, British naval forces attacked Lagos and reinstalled Akitoye as Oba. A decade later, Great Britain annexed Lagos and made it part of the empire. Britain claimed the rest of Nigeria by the 1880s, and in 1906, the state of Lagos was merged with Southern Nigeria. In 1914, Northern and Southern Nigeria were unified into a single nation, and Lagos was named its capital.

Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960 and underwent a period of political instability and military coups. During this time, Nigeria became a major oil-producing nation and joined the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC). As a result, the city of Lagos began to grow rapidly, outpacing its ability to adjust to the massive population increase. The city became dangerously overcrowded. It was polluted and had crippling traffic congestion. To decentralize the population and alleviate some of the problems gripping the city, Nigerian officials decided to relocate its capital in the mid-1970s. The new capital of Abuja was established in central Nigeria, and most government functions were fully transferred there by 1991, officially ending Lagos’ position as capital.

As Lagos continued its rise to an economic powerhouse, problems of overcrowding, pollution, crime, and ethnic violence grew as well. In 2002, a series of accidental explosions at a military base in the city caused mass panic and a stampede that killed more than 1,110 people. In 2006, a pair of pipeline explosions left several hundred people dead. The explosions were caused when thieves drilled holes into the lines to steal fuel. Anger over perceived police brutality led to a series of demonstrations in Lagos in 2020, prompting the government to open fire on some of the protesters. More than fifty people were killed in the violence.

Lagos has entered into sister city relationships with several other metropolitan areas and regions around the world. Chief among these is a relationship with the city of Atlanta, Georgia, that was forged in 1974. Other sister cities of Lagos include Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Bucharest, Romania. Among the most famous people born in Lagos is basketball Hall-of-Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1984 to 2002. Olajuwon won two championships with the Houston Rockets and, at 7 feet tall, is considered one of the best big men to ever play in the NBA.

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