Every day, millions of people move through Lagos without ever thinking about what existed before the city became Nigeria’s commercial giant.
They see traffic. Bridges. Skyscrapers. Danfo buses. Nightlife. Endless construction.
But beneath all of that is an older Lagos that still quietly survives under the concrete.
Before colonial rule. Before the British arrived. Before the name “Lagos” appeared on European maps. Before luxury estates rose from swamps and wetlands, the region was a maze of lagoons, creeks, mangrove forests, and fishing settlements inhabited by the Awori people.
Long before Eko became a megacity, the Awori had already built communities across the waters that shaped the region.
And one of the greatest ironies in Nigerian history is that many people living in Lagos today know almost nothing about them.
The People Who Followed the Water
Like many Yoruba groups, the Awori trace their roots to ancient Ile Ife, regarded in Yoruba tradition as a spiritual homeland.
According to Awori oral history, a leader named Olofin Ogunfunminire left Ile Ife with followers during a period of migration centuries ago.
But unlike ordinary migration stories, this journey carried something mystical.
Tradition says Olofin carried a sacred mud plate or ritual object which he was instructed to place on water and follow wherever it drifted. The object reportedly floated through rivers, lagoons, and creeks until it finally stopped within the coastal region that later became associated with Awori settlements.
Even today, the story is still told in Awori communities with deep reverence.
Some traditions connect the name “Awori” to this event, though historians believe the meaning evolved through oral history over generations.
What is more historically certain is that Awori speaking communities established some of the earliest known Yoruba settlements connected to the Lagos lagoon region long before colonial rule transformed the area.
Communities such as Isheri, Ota, Ojo, Otto, Iddo, Badagry, and several older settlements around present day Lagos and Ogun States still preserve strong Awori roots.
At a time when much of the region was covered in wetlands and thick vegetation, the Awori adapted to life on water in ways that shaped their identity forever.
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Before Roads Existed, The Lagoons Were the Highways
Modern Lagos is a city of flyovers, expressways, buses, and traffic so intense it has become part of the city’s global identity.
But centuries ago, movement happened very differently.
The lagoons were the roads.
Canoes were the buses.
Water connected everything.
The old Lagos region was once dominated by interconnected waterways stretching toward the Atlantic Ocean. Mangrove forests covered large parts of the environment while narrow creeks linked settlement after settlement.
At dawn, fishermen pushed carved wooden canoes into mist covered waters while women smoked fresh fish over open fires nearby.
Children learned how to paddle almost as naturally as they learned how to walk.
Entire communities depended on fishing, canoe carving, local trade, salt processing, farming, and movement through the waterways.
The Awori became deeply skilled navigators of this difficult terrain. They understood tides, flood patterns, hidden water routes, fishing cycles, and changing lagoon conditions with remarkable precision.
Their environment shaped their worldview.
Water was not simply part of life.
Water was life itself.
The Ancient Communities Hidden Inside Modern Lagos
Many Lagosians move through areas today without realizing they are walking through places connected to centuries of Awori history.
Communities such as Ota, Isheri, Ojo, Otto, Iddo, Ijanikin, and parts of Badagry preserve deep Awori historical roots.
Long before Victoria Island became associated with luxury estates and business districts, much of the region surrounding Lagos was occupied by fishing settlements and trading communities connected through waterways.
These settlements were not isolated villages cut off from the wider world.
They participated in regional trade networks linking inland Yoruba communities with the Atlantic coast. Smoked fish, vegetables, cocoyam, cassava, palm products, and trade goods moved constantly through the lagoons.
As commerce expanded along the West African coast, the strategic position of Awori communities became increasingly important.
Their closeness to water made them natural intermediaries between inland traders and coastal exchange routes.
The Culture That Grew Beside the Water
The Awori speak a distinct Yoruba dialect shaped by centuries of coastal interaction and localized development.
But Awori identity extended far beyond language alone.
Family lineage, ancestry, spirituality, oral tradition, and connection to specific settlements all shaped community life.
Respect for elders held enormous importance.
In traditional Awori society, elders were seen as living libraries who preserved migration stories, family histories, wisdom, and communal memory.
Greetings were deeply symbolic. Respect was not optional. It was woven into daily life.
Music also shaped the rhythm of society.
Talking drums echoed through festivals and ceremonies. Songs carried historical memory from one generation to another. Oral storytelling preserved migration traditions, spiritual beliefs, family genealogies, and moral lessons long before written records became common.
Marriage ceremonies were large communal events involving extended families, negotiations, prayers, gifts, celebration, drumming, and food.
Food itself reflected the environment around them.
Fish became central to many meals alongside yam, cassava, maize, cocoyam, pepper soups, vegetables, and smoked seafood preserved through methods passed down for generations.
Women played powerful economic roles through trade and food processing while men often focused on fishing, farming, canoe building, and navigation.
But survival within lagoon environments often required collective effort from entire families and communities.
The Spiritual World of the Awori
Before Christianity and Islam spread across the region, Awori spirituality reflected the wider indigenous Yoruba religious system centered around Orisha, divine spiritual forces connected to nature, destiny, morality, and existence itself.
Among the most respected spiritual figures were Ogun, associated with iron and labor, Sango, linked to thunder and royal authority, Yemoja, connected to water and motherhood, and Ifa, the sacred system of divination and wisdom.
Because the Awori lived so closely with rivers and lagoons, water spirituality carried enormous significance.
Certain forests, creeks, and waterways were regarded as spiritually powerful spaces tied to ancestral presence and divine forces.
Traditional rulers often combined political leadership with spiritual authority.
Festivals were not simply moments of entertainment.
They were acts of remembrance.
Moments where the living honored ancestors, renewed communal identity, and preserved sacred traditions that connected generations together.
Masquerade traditions also formed part of social and spiritual life, representing ancestral continuity and the invisible relationship between the living and the dead.
Even after Christianity and Islam spread through Lagos and Ogun regions, traces of indigenous spirituality survived within naming ceremonies, burial rites, festivals, and cultural symbolism that remain visible today.
When Eko Began to Change
One of the biggest misconceptions about Lagos is the belief that its history began with colonialism.
In reality, long before British annexation in 1861, settlements already existed throughout the lagoon region.
Awori communities formed part of these early societies that occupied the mainland and surrounding waterways before Lagos evolved into a major Atlantic port city.
Over time, the region also came under strong political influence from the Benin Empire, especially through dynastic structures connected to Lagos Island.
The history of Lagos eventually became layered and deeply complex.
Awori settlements, Benin political expansion, Atlantic trade networks, European merchants, returnee communities from Brazil and Sierra Leone, and later British colonial rule all shaped the city that emerged over centuries.
As trade expanded along the coast, Lagos gradually transformed into one of the most important commercial centers in West Africa.
But inside that transformation, something else happened quietly.
The memory of the original lagoon communities slowly began to fade.
Colonialism and the Disappearance of Old Lagos
British colonialism permanently altered both the physical landscape and social life of indigenous communities across Lagos.
Roads replaced waterways. Wetlands disappeared beneath construction. Fishing settlements became absorbed into growing urban districts.
As migration increased, Lagos evolved into one of Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities.
People arrived from across Nigeria and beyond in search of trade, work, education, and opportunity.
English education, Christianity, colonial administration, wage labor, and modernization transformed traditional society rapidly.
The environmental impact was enormous.
Fishing communities that had depended on the lagoons for generations suddenly faced pollution, industrialization, land reclamation, and shrinking waterways.
Entire ecosystems slowly disappeared beneath concrete and urban expansion.
Yet despite all these changes, Awori culture never vanished completely.
Festivals survived.
Traditional institutions endured.
Oral histories remained alive inside families and communities even while skyscrapers rose around them.
The Quiet Fight to Preserve Identity
Today, many young Lagosians know more about foreign cities than the indigenous history of the land beneath their own city.
For many Awori communities, preserving identity has become both cultural and deeply emotional.
Urban expansion continues reshaping ancestral lands while younger generations increasingly grow up disconnected from older dialects, traditions, and historical memory.
Traditional fishing lifestyles have declined in many areas due to environmental degradation and economic change.
Yet there is also resistance against cultural disappearance.
Community historians, youth organizations, traditional rulers, and cultural advocates continue working to preserve festivals, oral traditions, language, and indigenous history.
Because for many people, rediscovering Awori history is also rediscovering the forgotten origins of Lagos itself.
The Story Beneath the City
The story of the Awori is bigger than one tribe.
It is the story of how modern cities can bury older civilizations beneath concrete, traffic, and rapid development.
Long before Lagos became known for wealth, nightlife, entertainment, and commercial ambition, people already lived beside its lagoons, paddled through its creeks, built fishing settlements on its wetlands, and created communities tied deeply to water and ancestral memory.
The Awori were among those people.
Their story still survives quietly beneath modern Eko.
In the names of old communities.
In traditional festivals.
In oral histories repeated by elders.
In the surviving lagoons hidden between highways and skyscrapers.
And in the growing realization that the true history of Lagos began long before the modern city the world sees today.
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Author’s Note
The story of the Awori reveals a version of Lagos history many people were never taught. Beneath the image of traffic, nightlife, business, and rapid urban growth lies a much older world shaped by migration, fishing communities, waterways, spirituality, trade, and survival. The Awori represent one of the foundational cultures connected to the early Lagos region, and their history reflects how indigenous communities can slowly disappear from public memory even while their influence remains all around us. Remembering their story is not simply about preserving the past. It is about understanding the deeper roots of identity, belonging, and culture inside one of Africa’s most powerful cities.
References
Akinjogbin, I. A.
History of the Yoruba
Peil, Margaret
Lagos: The City Is the People
Mann, Kristin
Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900
Smith, Robert
The Lagos Consulate, 1851–1861
Biobaku, Saburi
Sources of Yoruba History
Law, Robin
The Oyo Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Johnson, Samuel
The History of the Yorubas
Aderibigbe, A. B.
Lagos: The Development of an African City
Yoruba oral traditions preserved among Awori communities in Lagos and Ogun States
