Colonial era (1900–1959) — Lagos State

June–August 1908 — Lagos Water-Rate Riots. Governor Egerton's £170,000 Iju Waterworks loan is to be recouped via a flat house-rate; the Lagos Auxiliary of the People's Union (Herbert Macaulay, John K. Randle, Orisadipe Obasa) mobilises tenants and market women against it. Mass meetings at the Glover Hall, public refusal to pay, court-summons protests outside Tinubu Square. The rate is suspended and only quietly re-imposed in 1915; the campaign is the founding act of organised anti-colonial mass politics in Nigeria and the direct ancestor of the 1929 Aba Women's War and the 1945 General Strike.Economic Shock Cycle Impunity Loop
1929 — Lagos waterfront strike (Apapa quayside). Marine Department dockers walk out over racial wage differentials; the strike is broken in three weeks by Marine Police arrests but produces the African Workers' Union of Nigeria nucleus.
22 Jun – 4 Aug 1945 — General Strike of 1945 (Lagos hinge). Michael Imoudu's Railway Workers Union and the TUC of Nigeria pull 30,000+ workers off the job for 44 days demanding a Cost of Living Allowance; Lagos rail, post, marine and PWD shut completely. Governor Bourdillon's COLA concession is the first time a colonial government in Africa is forced into a wage negotiation by an organised African union. Nnamdi Azikiwe's *West African Pilot* and *Daily Comet* are banned 8 Jul; the ban radicalises a generation of nationalist editors.Economic Shock Cycle
18 Nov 1949 — Iva Valley solidarity (Lagos). Within 48 hours of the Iva Valley shootings (21 colliery miners killed at Enugu), Lagos railway workers, market women and Zikist Movement cadres stage the largest single demonstration the colony has seen — Tafawa Balewa Square is occupied for three days. The Zikist Movement is proscribed 12 Apr 1950 in direct consequence.Impunity Loop
1959 — Action Group / NCNC street violence (Mushin, Agege, Ajeromi). Federal-election campaigning produces the first sustained Lagos-suburb political violence; AG "Esinkin" and NCNC "Zikist" wards fight running battles around Idi-Oro and Oshodi. Casualties under 30 but the organisational template for the 1965 Wild Wild West violence and the 1993 June-12 riots is set here.