Among the lesser-known episodes in the nineteenth-century history of the creeks east of Lagos is the establishment of what later Arogbo historical tradition remembered as a “freedom post” or “post of sanctuary” at Egbesubiri, Arogbo, in 1885.
The story is historically significant because it brings together three developments that were occurring simultaneously: the persistence of slavery and slave trading in parts of West Africa, the expansion of British authority from Lagos into the eastern lagoon and creek system, and the intensifying European competition for territory during the partition of Africa.
Edward Harland Duckworth travelled through this part of southern Nigeria decades after the events of 1885. His account appeared in “Exploring in Nigeria,” published in 1947 in No. 26 of the periodical formally titled Nigeria, pages 331–395.
Later scholars sometimes cited the piece as Exploring Nigeria and referred to the publication retrospectively as Nigeria Magazine. The periodical was subsequently known as Nigeria Magazine, but in 1947 its title was Nigeria.
Northwestern University Libraries preserves Duckworth’s photographic collection, including an image catalogued as showing a young man standing beside an “Arogbo Police Station” sign. The photograph preserves evidence of the colonial administrative presence that Duckworth encountered in the area.
The Arogbo Freedom Post
A detailed account of the Arogbo freedom post appears in Felix George’s 2022 doctoral thesis at the University of Ibadan, Changing Identities and Inter-Group Relations among the Arogbo-Ijo and Apoi of Ondo State, Nigeria, 1915–2007.
George records an Arogbo historical tradition that the British established a post of sanctuary or freedom post for slaves at Egbesubiri in 1885, during the reign of Pere Aaga Thinba Bibija, Aaga I.
His account distinguishes the freedom post from the police station.
Drawing partly on oral testimony collected in 2015 from Chief Happy Kawei Atili of Egbesubiri, George explains that what Arogbo-Ijo historical memory called the post of sanctuary or freedom post was associated with the British Union Jack.
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Nearby British structures included a police station, court and residential accommodation for colonial personnel.
George further states that because of Arogbo’s strategic location and the desire to protect British commercial and related interests, the Lagos Constabulary established a police post in 1885 behind the freedom post at Egbesubiri.
The two installations were therefore closely associated geographically and historically, although they were remembered as distinct features of the developing British colonial presence.
British Expansion into Arogbo in 1885
The chronology of British political expansion into Arogbo is supported by later academic research.
Opeyemi Anthony Iroju’s 2021 University of Ibadan doctoral thesis, A History of Arogbo Ijo of the Western Delta, Nigeria, 1885–1960, identifies 1885 as the beginning of direct British colonisation of Arogbo-Ijo.
Iroju emphasises Arogbo’s strategic and geographical location.
Arogbo occupied an important creek environment linking Lagos with communities farther east. The waterways were channels of transport, communication and commerce, and control over them increasingly mattered to British officials.
The freedom-post tradition therefore developed within a much wider process of territorial expansion.
The Anti-Slavery
Anti-slavery policy formed an important part of Britain’s political activity in Lagos and its surrounding territories.
Britain formally acquired Lagos through the Treaty of Cession of 6 August 1861.
Article I stated, among other purposes, that British control would enable the Crown to put an end to the slave trade in Lagos and neighbouring territories and to restrain wars undertaken for the capture of slaves.
Slavery, however, did not disappear throughout the region after the annexation of Lagos.
There was no single political entity called Nigeria in either 1861 or 1885. The Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria was created only after the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914.
Britain had prohibited British participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, and legislation abolishing slavery across much of the British Empire took effect in the 1830s. Yet slave trading, slaveholding, pawnship and other systems of dependency continued in different parts of West Africa long afterwards.
The ending of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the longer process of emancipation were related but distinct developments.
People seeking to escape enslavement could therefore regard places associated with British authority as potential sources of protection. At Arogbo, that memory became particularly associated with the British flag.
Mahin and the International Crisis of 1885
The wider history of Mahin explains why 1885 became such an important year in the region.
Mahin was drawn into direct European imperial competition.
On 11 March 1885, Amapetu, King of Mahin, entered into a treaty of friendship and protection with Gustav Nachtigal, acting on behalf of the German emperor.
The agreement contained a provision under which its continuation depended upon ratification by the Imperial German Government.
Britain subsequently moved to consolidate its own position in the area.
On 24 October 1885, a treaty signed at Aboto provided for the cession of Mahin Beach to Britain.
A second agreement concluded on the same date placed Mahin territory under British protection.
These treaties provide documentary evidence of Britain’s consolidation of authority in Mahin during the same year in which Arogbo historical tradition dates the establishment of the freedom post and police station at Egbesubiri.
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The process continued in 1886.
A proclamation issued on 5 February 1886 declared that the coastline between Odi and the Benin River, including territories covered by earlier agreements and Mahin Beach, was under British sovereignty and protection.
The proclamation further stated that the coastline had been attached to and formed part of the Protectorate of Lagos.
These developments place the events at Arogbo within the broader territorial expansion of British power eastwards from Lagos.
Sanctuary, Commerce and Colonial Power
The Arogbo freedom post existed within a colonial environment shaped by several overlapping interests.
British officials were concerned with policing waterways, protecting commerce, maintaining political influence and strengthening territorial claims.
At the same time, British anti-slavery policy gave people fleeing enslavement opportunities to seek protection within areas associated with British authority.
The freedom post and the colonial installations around it therefore reflected different dimensions of the same historical moment.
For British officials, control of the creeks strengthened commerce, jurisdiction, policing and territorial authority.
For a person attempting to escape slavery, the British flag could carry a more immediate meaning: the possibility of reaching a place of sanctuary.
Arogbo historical memory preserves this relationship between the flag and protection.
Arogbo, Mahin and the Expansion of British Authority
The development of the freedom post at Arogbo coincided with a broader transformation taking place throughout the western Niger Delta and the eastern approaches to Lagos.
Mahin had become a contested territory within European imperial diplomacy. Arogbo occupied a strategically important creek location. British officials were extending administrative structures into areas that previously lay beyond the direct control of the Lagos government.
The Lagos Constabulary was one of the instruments through which this authority was established.
Police posts helped secure waterways, protect commercial interests and reinforce British political presence.
At Egbesubiri, the police post stood close to the place remembered locally as the freedom post.
The court and residential buildings recorded in later accounts further illustrate how the location developed into a centre of colonial administration.
The freedom post was therefore part of a changing political landscape rather than an isolated monument.
The Meaning of the British Flag
The identification of the freedom post with the British Union Jack is particularly significant.
Flags were among the most visible symbols of European territorial authority during the late nineteenth century. In the political environment created by the partition of Africa, the raising of a flag could signal claims of jurisdiction and protection.
At Arogbo, however, the Union Jack acquired another remembered meaning.
Within local historical tradition, it came to represent a point where people escaping slavery could seek sanctuary.
This gives the freedom post a dual historical character.
The flag represented the growing authority of a foreign colonial power, but it could also offer practical protection to people attempting to escape enslavement.
These two meanings existed within the same historical landscape.
Slavery and Freedom in the Creek Country
The history of Arogbo’s freedom post also illustrates the complicated transition from slavery towards emancipation in nineteenth-century West Africa.
The decline of the Atlantic slave trade did not immediately end local systems of slavery.
People continued to be held in different forms of dependency, and the social and economic consequences of slavery remained significant.
British territorial expansion introduced new political boundaries and institutions into this environment.
Where British authorities recognised claims to freedom, those institutions could create opportunities for enslaved people to escape existing relationships of ownership or dependence.
The history preserved at Egbesubiri reflects this wider transformation.
The freedom post became associated not simply with an administrative boundary but with the possibility of sanctuary.
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The Historical Importance of Duckworth’s Record
When Edward Harland Duckworth travelled through the region decades later, he encountered surviving reminders of this colonial expansion.
His 1947 article, “Exploring in Nigeria,” helped preserve information about the old installations at a time when many nineteenth-century colonial structures were already disappearing.
His photographs added a visual dimension to the historical record.
The image of the Arogbo Police Station sign is particularly valuable because it preserves evidence of an administrative site linked to the early British presence in the area.
Duckworth’s work therefore serves as an important bridge between the nineteenth-century establishment of colonial authority and later historical scholarship on Arogbo and Mahin.
Conclusion
The history of Arogbo’s freedom post forms an important part of the wider story of slavery, emancipation and British expansion in the creek country of present-day Ondo State.
Arogbo historical tradition, preserved in academic research, identifies a post of sanctuary or freedom post at Egbesubiri in 1885 and associates it particularly with the British Union Jack.
The same scholarship records that the Lagos Constabulary established a police post behind the freedom post in 1885, reflecting Arogbo’s strategic position and British commercial interests.
Independent academic research places the beginning of direct British colonial authority in Arogbo-Ijo in 1885.
Treaty records also establish the simultaneous consolidation of British authority over neighbouring Mahin.
The Mahin treaties of 24 October 1885 and the proclamation of 5 February 1886 place these local developments firmly within the wider history of European territorial expansion in West Africa.
The Arogbo freedom post therefore stood at the meeting point of several powerful historical forces.
It belonged to a landscape shaped by slavery and emancipation, African communities and European imperialism, commercial interests and colonial administration.
For British officials, the surrounding posts represented the extension of political authority.
For people seeking escape from enslavement, the freedom post could represent something far more immediate: sanctuary.
That combination of meanings gives the site an enduring place in the history of the Mahin and Arogbo creeks.
Author’s Note
This article draws on Edward Harland Duckworth’s 1947 account, archival material preserved by Northwestern University Libraries, nineteenth-century treaty records and historical research undertaken at the University of Ibadan.
The surviving scholarship distinguishes the Arogbo freedom post, associated with the British Union Jack, from the Lagos Constabulary police station established nearby at Egbesubiri in 1885.
Together, these sources illuminate the relationship between sanctuary from slavery and the wider expansion of British colonial authority through Mahin, Arogbo and the surrounding creek country.
References
Duckworth, E. H. “Exploring in Nigeria.” Nigeria, No. 26, 1947, pp. 331–395.
George, Felix. Changing Identities and Inter-Group Relations among the Arogbo-Ijo and Apoi of Ondo State, Nigeria, 1915–2007. PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Ibadan, 2022.
Iroju, Opeyemi Anthony. A History of Arogbo Ijo of the Western Delta, Nigeria, 1885–1960. PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Ibadan, 2021.
Hertslet, Sir Edward. The Map of Africa by Treaty. 3rd ed. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909. See the treaties concerning Mahin Beach and Mahin of 24 October 1885 and the proclamation of 5 February 1886.
Treaty between Great Britain and Docemo, King of Lagos, 6 August 1861.
Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. Edward Harland Duckworth Photographs, including the archival entry relating to the “Arogbo Police Station” sign.
McIntyre, W. D. “Commander Glover and the Colony of Lagos, 1861–73.” The Journal of African History, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1963, pp. 57–79.
