The veteran legal luminary, political and community leader, and national elder, Chief Femi Okunnu, intervened during the past week in the sometimes puzzling debate on the origins, history and status of Lagos. He was reported to have said that Lagos is a Yoruba city, and that no amount of mouthing of history can change that fact. Of course, that fact is fact; but, in the circumstances of these days, it helps that a Lagosian of Chief Okunnu’s caliber affirms it with such authority.
Personally, the foremost thing that I keep saying about Lagos is that Lagos is a phenomenally great city – a city meant by God to be great. I like our youths calling it the “megalopolis”. It is the greatest city on the African continent, one of the greatest cities in the world, and as it is growing today, a city with limitless promise.
In a mood of intense admiration for Lagos many years ago, I sat down one morning in a faraway country and wrote a short poem for Lagos – a poem with lines such as “Africa’s jewel of the coasts”, “School of life and wisdom”, “Drinks full of small lagoon and large ocean”, “Equips to cope with the shifting sands”, “Springhouse of fashion”, “Wiggles her waist like none else can do”, “Merchant queen of all”, “Bestrides the continents and seas”, “Gathers great wealth from far and near”, “Bestows rich fortunes with her gilded hand”.
Much of the roots of the perpetually growing greatness of Lagos is its gorgeous cosmopolitanism. Lagos is home to large numbers of folks from all the countless Yoruba subgroups with their countless dialects of the Yoruba language. Lagos is also home to people from virtually all the nations of Nigeria, almost all the nations of the West African sub-continent, and people from more of the nations of Africa than one would find in any other city on the African continent. Lagos is also home to folks from all continents of the earth.
Lagos simply loves to welcome and include more and more people, more and more cultures, more and more variety. From what our historians tell us about the history of this wonderful city, the love of welcoming and including people from all directions was in its character from its very beginning. It is a character trait that it shares from the Yoruba ethnic nation to which it belongs. European colonialism hid the true characters of Black Africa’s ethnic nations from the world; but the world is now discovering that a Black African nation called the Yoruba are one of the most welcoming, one of the most hospitable, one of the best places to come and prosper, in the world. Of the hundreds of Yoruba cities and towns, there is not a single one that does not boast of significant families, lineages or chieftaincy holders with origins traceable to other parts of Yorubaland, or other nations of Nigeria, or even other nations of Africa. Some trace even their kings likewise.
The earliest ancestors of the Yoruba people somehow discovered the truth that a land that is open and hospitable to all comers attracts prosperity towards itself. In the ancient compendium of Yoruba knowledge and wisdom, the long corpus known as Odu-Ifa, rendered in 400,000 poetic verses, this truth is stated emphatically in one of the verses. The verse says, “A stranger or foreigner is coming. There are benefits coming with the stranger or foreigner. Receive and take good care of the stranger or foreigner, lest the benefits be missed and lost”. An obvious corollary to this fundamental philosophy of Yoruba community and national life is that, if one’s ancestry happens to contain some foreign strand, one must wisely harmonize it with the whole community and nation in ways that beautify and glorify the whole; one loses much by seeking to cause offence with it. In my understanding, that is what Chief Okunnu was saying this past week.
Chief Okunnu is also supported by the history. Here is some outline on the history. Among the videos in my archives, there is a recent one in which the narrator makes the statement that “Lagos was founded in the 16th century by the Edo”. It is obvious right away that this statement was made with little or no knowledge or thinking behind it. What does this narrator mean by “founded”? Does he mean founded as a human settlement, or founded as a kingdom?
We know definitively (thanks to studies by archaeologists, scholars of historical linguistics, and historians) that Lagos was one of the early primitive settlements created by the Yoruba people in very ancient times. The evolution of agriculture in about 10,000 BC in the Middle Niger territory made it possible for humans to cease wandering for food and begin to live as settlers. Settling resulted in the gradual evolution of groups with languages and ethnic cultures – such as the Nupe, Yoruba, Igala, Igbo, Edo, Gbagyi, etc.
The Yoruba started off as a group with many subgroup dialects, and spread roughly westwards and southwards. Between 2000 BC and 1000 BC, their southernmost thrust had reached the Atlantic coast, with their Awori subgroup in the forests and islands which are now Lagos, Iseri, Otta, etc; the coastal Ijebu further to the east; the Ilaje further still to the east; and the Isekiri in the easternmost coastal reaches. The Edo group (a non-Yoruba group) settled in the forests to the east of Yorubaland, the Igbo group east of the Lower Niger, etc.
Millennia later, in about 900 AD, a very major change began in the political life of the Yoruba people. It began when the small settlements in the Ife forest area in central Yorubaland, after many years of conflicts among them, finally coalesced together to become a single town, Ile-Ife, under one single crowned head known as an Oba. (The idea of a crowned ruler known as an Oba was simply adopted from the political practices which the old small settlements had evolved). In the six centuries following that event, having kingdoms like the Ife kingdom and towns like Ile-Ife became somehow very popular among Yoruba people. A brave and adventurous prince from Ife would go into the Yoruba forests, find a clump of different settlements in a location, and proceed to make them coalesce and become one town like Ile-Ife, with himself as the Oba. From some of the kingdoms founded like that, adventurers went out in later years and founded kingdoms too. The Yoruba thus became a people living much in large towns – an urbanized people, indeed the most urbanized people in all of Black Africa. According to some Edo and Yoruba traditions, a warrior prince went from Ife in the same era and helped the Edo to create a kingdom of their own in the Edo forests. In the Awori forest, an adventurer said to be from Ife came to Otta and founded the Otta kingdom; and another came soon after to Iseri on the Ogun River and founded the Iseri kingdom.
Centuries later, in about the 1470s, European explorers came to the coast of West Africa. Trade between Europeans and Africans developed along the coasts. On the Awori coast, the islands slowly became important in the trade with the Europeans. To share in the trade, the rulers of the Iseri kingdom moved the centre of their kingdom nearer to the coast – first to Ebute Meta, then to Ido Island, and finally to Lagos Island, welcomed by the pre-existing Awori settlers. A kingdom of the Awori thus emerged here. Over time, it became known as Eko among some traders, and as Lagos among the European traders.
By about 1600, both the Lagos kingdom and the Edo kingdom of Benin had become very important centres of trade with the Europeans. The Benin kingdom had become rich and powerful. Lagos was also rich and regularly flooded by Ijebu, Benin, Ilaje, Ijaw and Adja traders trading with the Europeans and with one another.
In a political development whose details still remain unclear, the Edo became involved in conflicts in the politics of the Lagos kingdom in about 1602. Some traditions seem to indicate that this was probably a succession dispute between Awori princes, a dispute in which one of the parties won the support of the Edo trading community. In any case, part of the outcome seems to be a Lagos king with some Edo blood – or with Edo endorsement and support. This happened in about 1602 – based partly on Edo and Lagos traditions, and partly on what a German trader in Lagos wrote in 1603. In the 1800s, Lagos was blessed with streams of returnees from Sierra Leone and the Americas.
Yes, Lagos is part of the Yoruba nation – as ethnic subgroup, early settlement, kingdom. And yes, Lagos encapsulates the world. Both ways, Lagos is a great beauty in our lives – a great beauty deserving responsible conduct by all concerned. Lots of thanks again to Chief Okunnu.
