Before Lagos was a colony, a state or a federal capital, it was three things at once — and the argument over which of the three came first has never really ended.
The first was the land. The Awori, a southern Yoruba people who trace their migration from Ile-Ife, settled the lagoon and its islands from the late 15th century under Olofin of Isheri. The fishing camps at Iddo, the salt-pans of the mainland, the farms behind the bar — these were Awori before any outside power put a name on a chart. Every serious historian, from Saburi Biobaku to Robert Smith to John B. Losi, agrees on this. The Idejo white-cap chiefs of Lagos — the original landowners whose descendants still allocate land today — are Awori, not Bini.
The second was the crown. Sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century, Benin's armies pushed west along the coast. Eko — the name itself is Edo, meaning 'war camp' — became a forward post in Benin's coastal projection. The pivot in the story is Ashipa. Here the traditions diverge.
The Lagos/Awori account, recorded by John Losi in his *History of Lagos* (1914) and elaborated by Smith's *The Lagos Consulate*, holds that Ashipa was an Awori chieftain from Isheri who recovered the body of Asheru — a Benin war captain killed in the lagoon — and personally returned it to Benin City. The Oba of Benin, grateful, conferred on him the title Oloriogun ('war chief') and his sanction to govern Eko on Benin's behalf. In this telling, the Oba ratified an existing Awori authority; he did not create it. Power flowed from Isheri; Benin only signed off.
The Benin account, repeated in Jacob Egharevba's *Short History of Benin* (1934) and in the oral traditions preserved at the Oba's palace, holds that Ashipa was a son or grandson of the Oba of Benin, sent — with regalia, an *ada* (ceremonial sword), drummers and palace officials — to rule Eko as a Benin appointee. In this telling, Benin founded the dynasty. Power flowed from Benin City; the Awori were the subjects.
Both traditions agree on what happened next. Every subsequent Oba of Lagos — from Ado to Gabaro to Akinsemoyin to Kosoko to Dosunmu to the present Oba Rilwan Akiolu — traces his line directly to Ashipa. The Lagos throne's regalia, its *ada*, the title of Eletu Odibo (the kingmaker), and several palace offices are demonstrably Benin in form. So is the very name *Eko*. So, for that matter, is the bead-work on the *Adeniji* crown. The Lagos royal house is, by inheritance and by ceremony, Benin-descended — even as the land beneath it remains Awori.
The third was the name. Portuguese mariners, charting the lagoon from the 1470s onwards, wrote *Lago de Curamo* and then simply *Lagos* — 'lakes', after their own Algarve port. The name stuck because the Portuguese stayed, because the Dutch and English copied their charts, and because the Aguda — Afro-Brazilian returnees from Bahia — brought the Portuguese pronunciation back with them in the 1830s and 1840s. By the time the British bombarded the town in December 1851 and annexed it in August 1861, every Admiralty office in London already had 'Lagos' on its maps. The Awori never asked to be renamed; neither did the Bini-descended Obas. The third name — like the second crown — was imposed without consultation, and outlasted the empire that imposed it.
Which brings the argument to November 2023. On a state visit to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in Benin City, Oba Ewuare II of Benin told his guest, on camera: *'It is in the history books that the Binis founded Lagos. When some people will hear it now, they will go haywire; what is the Oba saying there again? But it is in the history books.'* The remark detonated. Within hours, the Olofin of Isheri — direct successor to the Awori founder — issued a counter-statement: the Awori had settled the lagoon long before any Benin army arrived, and the Idejo chiefs, not the palace at Iga Idunganran, were the original landlords. Prof. Imran Smith (SAN), president of the Eko Foundation, gave the most-quoted formulation of the middle position: 'Awori own the land. Bini produced the Oba.'
Neither side is wholly wrong. The Awori cleared the bush and named the creeks; Benin installed and ratified the monarchy; the Portuguese supplied the name on the chart. The city is, and has always been, the product of all three. Ewuare II's claim is half-true in the way most contested origin stories are half-true — it foregrounds the part of the record that flatters the speaker's house and elides the part that does not. The Awori counter-claim is half-true for the same reason. The Portuguese, who started the third inheritance, left no descendants in the lagoon at all and so have nobody to argue on their behalf — which is perhaps why their imposition is the one nobody fights over.
What the 2023 controversy made visible — and what the Lagos Tricentenary celebrations of 1969–70 had carefully avoided — is that Lagos is the rare African city whose foundations cannot be claimed by a single ethnic group without immediate, evidence-backed contradiction from the other. It is, by construction, a layered city: Awori beneath, Benin above, Portuguese on the outside, British (and after 1960, federal) on top. Each layer is real. None of them cancels the others.