Any study of Nigerian politics without special attention paid to the political economy of Lagos within the Nigerian political complex will be missing the key role of Lagos metropolis in the history and politics of Nigeria. Just as in the past, Lagos for the foreseeable future remains a formidable factor in Nigerian economy and politics controlling about 60% of the economy of the country and its major entrepôt. Historically, Lagos was the entry point of Britain into Nigeria. When a naval squadron bombarded the city in 1851, ostensibly to stop the slave trade, the people of Lagos realised that the wider world was interested in what went on in Lagos. This naval promenade was repeated in 1861 and Lagos was permanently annexed to the British Empire and run sometimes from the Spanish Island of Fernando Po, (now Bioko) and later from the Gold Coast where the British had had an older settlement. By the middle of the 1860s, Lagos then had its own administration but still subordinated to the Gold Coast administration. Up on till 1875, the British were not really sure of what to make of its West African colonies. The West African Coast was regarded as the “white man’s grave” because of the malaria fever which killed off the white man within weeks of mosquitoes bite. Even when quinine was used in the 1820s as prophylactic against malaria, its effectiveness was still debated but was widely used by black liberated slaves on the West African coast especially from the settlements of liberated slaves in Saint Louis, Dakar, Freetown and Monrovia. Eventually white men began to tolerate the inhospitable climate and what was considered unhealthy environment of the coast for white people.
In the meantime, black people at least in the immediate hinterland of Lagos kept moving in droves to Lagos. Lagos had existed as a small fishing village established by the Awori people circa 1200AD. Over the years, they had witnessed Egba, Ijebu, Egun people coming to join them. The dramatic movement of some Edo warriors in the mid-15th century to the place did not quite change the demography of Lagos but its government which from then on was patterned after the monarchical institution of Benin which it too had inherited from Ile Ife. This was the settlement the British took over in 1861. The population of Lagos increased exponentially from the 1820s onwards from the considerable influx of liberated slaves from Brazil and Sierra Leone. These were Yoruba ex-slaves who knew the area of their birth. This population increased from 1876 onwards because of the century of warfare in Yorubaland which began with the Owu war in 1796 and was terminated by the British conquest of Ilorin in 1896. The period of war in Yorubaland facilitated the exodus of people into Lagos.
It is a surprising coincidence that just as warfare in Yorubaland intensified in 1876, the British a year before had stated through its Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, the Tory businessman from Birmingham, that Britain was then determined to acquire tropical colonies as “undeveloped estate of the realm”. This meant a forward policy in West Africa and in the Yorubaland hinterland of Lagos. By the time the British were effectively in the control of Nigeria in the 1890s, Lagos population had grown from the original Awori settlement to what can be called a cosmopolitan city without losing its Yoruba essence with cultural contributions from the various people who had made the city their home particularly the Anglophone Creole from Freetown and their counterparts, the Brazilians with their strong attachment to Catholicism while the indigenous Muslim elements were concentrated in the centre of the city with accretions from sizeable Nupe elements.
Lagos has always been a province of opportunity and freedom not only for Nigerians but also for West Africans.
Read Also: Delta community issues ultimatum to NEPL for construction of Abura flow station
Lagos was also the city which saw the emergence of virile newspapers with healthy dose of anti-colonial sentiments. With the press grew the sentiment of freedom and demand that Africa should be ruled by Africans and not by imperialists whose civilization was found to be exotic and different from acceptable African culture. The so-called educated elite in Lagos did not abhor everything British; what they were opposed to was the discriminatory practice which elevated the pigmentation of the skin over the character of the person. It is remarkable to note how advanced the political sociology of the Lagos elite was when compared with modern views of a racially neutral world. When the early Lagos nationalists like Drs J.K Randle and Obasa and Herbert Macaulay organised the very first political movements in Nigeria, they concentrated on the amelioration of social and political situation of the people of Lagos with the intention that a secure Lagos will be an attractive beacon to the rest of Nigeria. They have largely been proved right because over the years, Lagos has nurtured the political destinies of people like Herbert Macaulay, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, and now Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu. Other politicians have bestrode the Lagos firmament but on lesser scale than those of these three. It is remarkable that the three of them can trace their ancestry to places outside Lagos. Lagos has been a welcoming city and anybody who is prepared to work hard and struggle can make it in business and politics in Lagos. It is true that Lagos belongs to Lagosians. Lagos has never been a no man’s land. It was never a terra incognita. It was always an abode of people. People have always migrated to Lagos and have been absorbed by the people and their culture. People who come to Lagos and want to be Lagosians must embrace the people and their culture. This was what Yoruba speaking Herbert Macaulay from Sierra Leone and Nnamdi Azikiwe from Onitsha and what several Lagosians from diverse ancestry have done. Those who say Tinubu is not a Lagosian and that Alhaji Lateef Jakande was not a Lagosian do not know the history of modern Lagos. There are also those who say Atiku Abubakar is a Cameroonian and that the Baba Ahmeds are from Mauritania. Such people forget that we are all ancestrally from somewhere from where we are today. Besides, migration is a common factor in African history and that is why many of our northern Nigerians became Nigerians.
My ancestors came from Ajase Ipo in present day Kwara and I am very proud of it. This does not mean I am not an Ekiti, a place where my great grandfather, Dada “Agbo dumogun bere uja, taku taku a bija pe” fought for and was ready to die for. Unfortunately the assimilationist tendencies now seem frozen because of electoral democracy where every vote counts.
These preambular statements are designed to establish the point I want to make that is, we are from where we have fought and were ready to die for. I don’t know anybody who is more Lagosian than Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Tinubu withstood the federal political hurricane unleashed on Lagos during the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency and used the period of adversity to look inwards and develop Lagos into the fifth largest economy in Africa. He was prepared to die in the process for his belief. He definitely has paid his due.
Now to the kernel of my piece. People have said Tinubu is not physically fit and the man said appropriately that the presidency is not a boxing arena. Buhari despite his health challenge held fort there for eight years. Although Asiwaju does not intend to follow the Buhari trajectory because he has better business and economic ideas far superior to that of Buhari. He has also proved beyond debate that he is an organiser of men and material to achieve designed targets. He proved this in Lagos and his successors have followed the same trajectory. While governor of Lagos, he built a formidable civil service and teaching service open to all residents of Lagos marrying in good proportion the interests of “Omo Eko” and “Ara Eko”. Tinubu would never ignore the interests of Lagos indigenes and subordinate them to those of residents who have claims in other states apart from Lagos but at the same time, he believes in careers open to talents and would use the talents of outsiders to develop his favourite Lagos and now his country Nigeria. Tinubu’s reach globally is very long and wide. I remember when he developed his policy of land use, he tapped the knowledge of Canadians and I can testify to this verity because I was then the chairman of Nigerian-Canada Chamber of Commerce. As long as we continue to embrace the capitalist model of development, Tinubu has the golden touch to deliver even if he is not as robust as when he was much younger. Tinubu is now president of Nigeria and he has a wider canvass on which to paint and he still possesses the organising ability to assemble a winning team and perhaps he is one of the few people who can turn the economy around. But in doing this he needs the understanding of the people and their support, tolerance and the readiness to do whatever it takes and suffer the pain to see the country through the economic doldrums to which his predecessors have driven Nigeria into.
For those who know a little bit of history, the most successful president of America in modern times was Fredrick Delano Roosevelt who engineered from his wheelchair the most radical social and political transformation of that country.
