Lagos Colony

Lagos Colony was a British colonial possession centred on the port of Lagos in what is now southern Nigeria. Britain annexed Lagos in August 1861 under threat of force, and the town was declared a colony on 5 March 1862, with Lagos as its capital. By the 1870s it had become a cosmopolitan trading centre exporting palm oil and palm kernels. A small legislative council advised the governor, and the colony's merchants and Creole elite played a growing role in local politics. After prolonged wars among the mainland Yoruba states, the colony established a protectorate over much of Yorubaland between 1890 and 1897. The colony was incorporated into the new Southern Nigeria Protectorate in February 1906, and Lagos later became the capital of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in 1914. Its institutions and commercial networks helped make Lagos the largest city in West Africa, and the city remained Nigeria's capital until 1991.