Organised Nigerian nationalism in Lagos did not suddenly appear in the 1920s. By then, Lagos already possessed decades of newspaper criticism, political petitioning, disputes over taxation and land, and organised opposition to unpopular colonial policies. What changed during the 1920s was the machinery through which those grievances could be expressed.
A small electorate emerged. Political associations became increasingly connected to elections. Newspapers became instruments of sustained political mobilisation. Traditional rulers and chiefs defended customary interests, while educated professionals challenged racial and constitutional inequalities. Traders and market women also became important political constituencies.
The result was not democracy in the modern sense, nor was it yet the mass independence movement that would dominate Nigerian politics after the Second World War. Instead, Lagos became the principal arena in which older forms of protest developed into more sustained electoral and party politics.
That transformation rested on five major forces.
Political Organisation Had Begun Before the 1920s
The political history of Lagos did not begin with Herbert Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party in 1923.
Years earlier, educated Lagosians had already organised around public policy. One of the most important early organisations was the People’s Union, established in 1908 under the leadership of Dr John Randle and Dr Orisadipe Obasa.
The People’s Union became particularly associated with opposition to proposals connected with the Lagos water scheme and the taxation intended to help finance it. Its activities also reflected wider concerns about land, colonial policy and the political interests of Lagos residents.
The organisation illustrates an important distinction in Nigerian political history. The NNDP would later represent a new stage in formal party politics, but organised political activity had existed before the party was created.
Newspapers were also important long before the Clifford Constitution. Lagos had developed one of the most vigorous newspaper cultures in British West Africa. Journalists and editors criticised government policies, racial discrimination and restrictions on African advancement. Newspapers provided educated Africans with a public forum through which official policies could be questioned and alternative political arguments developed.
The 1920s therefore represented an acceleration and reorganisation of existing political activity rather than the beginning of Nigerian resistance.
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Land Rights Turned Colonial Authority into a Political Question
Land provided another powerful source of conflict.
One of the most significant cases concerned Chief Amodu Tijani Oluwa, an Idejo White Cap chief and head of the Oluwa community. Colonial acquisition of land at Apapa led to a lengthy dispute over the nature of customary ownership and the compensation owed for land taken by the government.
The case eventually reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. On 11 July 1921, the Privy Council delivered its judgment in Amodu Tijani v Secretary, Southern Nigeria.
The decision became important because it cautioned against interpreting African systems of landholding solely through English concepts of private property. It recognised the significance of communal customary interests and the position of a chief acting on behalf of his community.
Its political importance extended beyond land law.
The dispute demonstrated that colonial decisions affecting African land could be challenged through institutions of the British Empire itself. It also strengthened relationships between Lagos traditional authorities and educated political activists who opposed aspects of colonial government.
Herbert Macaulay was closely associated with the defence of Lagos traditional interests, particularly the House of Docemo and the Eleko. His involvement in disputes concerning land, traditional authority and colonial intervention helped establish him as one of the most formidable political figures in early twentieth century Lagos.
Land therefore became more than an economic issue. It formed part of a wider political contest over authority, property and the power of the colonial state.
Organised Nigerian Nationalism in Lagos Joined a West African Movement
The politics developing in Lagos was also connected to developments beyond Nigeria.
In March 1920, politically active West Africans established the National Congress of British West Africa, commonly known as the NCBWA, at Accra in the Gold Coast. The organisation brought together activists from the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gambia around a programme of constitutional and administrative reform.
Its demands included greater African representation, expanded municipal government, improvements in higher education, reform of discriminatory civil service practices and wider African participation in public affairs.
The Lagos branch began active operations on 16 October 1920.
The Congress was important because it gave Nigerian political activists a broader West African framework. Their grievances were no longer expressed simply as isolated Lagos disputes. Questions of racial equality, representation and African advancement could be connected to similar concerns across Britain’s West African territories.
Sir Hugh Clifford, Governor of Nigeria from 1919 to 1925, was sceptical of the Congress and questioned whether its Western educated leaders genuinely represented the wider African population.
Nevertheless, constitutional reform followed during his governorship, and representation became one of the defining political questions of the decade.
The Clifford Constitution Created a Narrow Electoral Opening
The most consequential constitutional change came through the Nigeria (Legislative Council) Order in Council, 1922, commonly associated with Governor Hugh Clifford.
Dated 21 November 1922, the order reorganised the Legislative Council and introduced four elected unofficial members. Three represented the municipal area of Lagos and one represented Calabar.
The reform was important, but political participation remained extremely restricted.
An elector had to be male, at least 21 years old, satisfy the required residence qualification and possess a gross annual income of at least £100.
Women could not vote. Most Nigerian men could not vote. Most of the country had no elected representation in the Legislative Council.
The Governor and colonial officials retained decisive political power.
Even so, the restricted franchise created something Nigerian political organisers had not previously possessed at Legislative Council level: contested elected seats around which sustained campaigns could be organised.
The first elections for the elected unofficial members representing Lagos and Calabar were held on 20 September 1923. The reconstituted Legislative Council was inaugurated on 31 October 1923.
Elections required candidates, campaign organisations, public meetings, political messages and voter mobilisation. Even with a very small electorate, the political consequences were substantial.
Lagos now possessed an institutional arena in which organised political groups could compete repeatedly for representation.
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Herbert Macaulay, the NNDP and Popular Alliances Changed Lagos Politics
The electoral opportunity encouraged Herbert Macaulay and his associates to establish the Nigerian National Democratic Party in 1923.
The NNDP is conventionally regarded as Nigeria’s first formal political party. Earlier organisations such as the People’s Union had already demonstrated organised political activism, but the NNDP represented a new phase in which a permanent party structure was developed around elections and political representation.
In the 1923 Legislative Council election, NNDP candidates captured all three elected Lagos seats. The fourth elected seat belonged to Calabar.
The significance of the NNDP extended beyond those electoral victories.
The party brought together candidates, campaign organisations, newspapers, public meetings, traditional political interests and urban constituencies. It established a form of political machinery capable of surviving beyond a single petition, controversy or protest.
Macaulay’s influence was strengthened further by the press.
The Lagos Daily News was launched on 9 November 1925 by Victor Babamuboni, a Lagos bookseller.
In 1927, Herbert Macaulay and Dr J. Akilade Caulcrick, a Sierra Leone born surgeon and politician, purchased the newspaper and its printing plant. Under Macaulay’s influence, the paper became closely associated with his political activities and the NNDP.
The growing relationship between newspapers and organised political movements became one of the defining features of Lagos politics.
Yet political mobilisation was not simply the work of educated male professionals.
Market Women and the Popular Side of Lagos Politics
The emergence of Alimotu Pelewura as an influential market leader demonstrates how political mobilisation expanded beyond the formally educated elite.
Pelewura became a leading figure in the Lagos Market Women Association and developed an important political relationship with Macaulay’s movement. Market women organised around issues that affected their livelihoods, including market regulations, taxation, trading conditions and government intervention.
Although women were excluded from the colonial franchise, they could exercise influence through collective organisation, protest, participation in political gatherings and alliances with political leaders.
Pelewura and other market women therefore became part of a political world from which they were formally excluded as voters.
Traditional chiefs also remained important. Merchants, religious constituencies and ordinary urban residents contributed to the political networks developing around Lagos.
Macaulay’s political strength came partly from his ability to connect different sections of Lagos society. Educated professionals could draft petitions and interpret constitutional rules. Newspapers could circulate arguments. Chiefs possessed customary authority. Traders and market organisations contributed extensive economic and social networks.
Early Lagos nationalism consequently developed through interaction between elite leadership and popular mobilisation.
Reform Before the Demand for Independence
The political ambitions of the 1920s differed substantially from those that would dominate the final decades of British colonial rule.
Many early Nigerian nationalists were not yet consistently demanding the immediate independence that Nigeria eventually achieved on 1 October 1960.
Their principal concerns often centred on constitutional representation, racial discrimination, African participation in government, educational opportunities, civil service appointments, taxation, land rights and restraints on arbitrary colonial authority.
Their politics challenged important features of colonial rule without necessarily demanding its immediate abolition.
This distinction helps explain the place of the 1920s within the wider development of Nigerian nationalism.
The mass nationalism later associated with Nnamdi Azikiwe, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, trade union activism and increasingly explicit demands for self government developed under different historical circumstances.
The activists of the 1920s nevertheless helped establish political instruments that later generations would expand.
Lagos Was a Centre, Not the Whole Story
Lagos occupied an exceptional position because it concentrated many of the elements required for sustained political organisation: newspapers, lawyers, merchants, educated professionals, traditional rulers, organised traders, political associations and, after the constitutional changes of 1922, a restricted electorate.
But Lagos was not the only source of Nigerian nationalism.
Calabar also received an elected Legislative Council seat under the 1922 arrangements. Political consciousness was developing elsewhere, while Nigerian activists increasingly participated in wider West African political networks.
The significance of Lagos rested in the unusual concentration of institutions that allowed political activism to become increasingly permanent, competitive and organised.
Conclusion
The 1920s did not mark the moment Nigerians first resisted British colonial rule. Resistance, protest, press criticism, petitions and organised political activity had all appeared before that decade.
What changed was the political machinery.
The National Congress of British West Africa connected Nigerian activists to a regional constitutional movement. The Clifford constitutional arrangements created a restricted electoral opening. The NNDP turned that opening into organised party competition. Newspapers gave political movements a continuing public voice. Traditional authorities, traders and market women extended political mobilisation beyond formally educated professional circles.
This was the deeper significance of organised Nigerian nationalism in Lagos.
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The electorate remained tiny, and colonial officials retained decisive power. Independence was not yet the immediate objective of most early nationalist leaders.
Yet many of the political practices established during this period endured. Parties, elections, constitutional arguments, newspaper mobilisation, public meetings and alliances between political elites and popular constituencies would become increasingly important as Nigeria moved towards self government.
Lagos in the 1920s was therefore not the birthplace of Nigerian resistance. It was one of the most important places where older grievances acquired the durable institutions of modern Nigerian politics.
Author’s Note
The history of Lagos in the 1920s shows that nationalism developed through accumulation rather than from a single dramatic beginning. Political associations appeared before formal parties, newspapers challenged colonial policies before mass nationalism emerged, traditional rulers defended customary interests, and traders and market women influenced public affairs despite severe restrictions on political participation. The limited constitutional reforms of the early 1920s did not create democratic government, but they opened an electoral arena that Nigerian organisers learned to use. The institutions and alliances developed in this period became part of the political inheritance later generations expanded during Nigeria’s struggle for self government and independence.
References
Nigeria (Legislative Council) Order in Council, 1922.
Colonial Office. Annual General Report for Nigeria, 1923.
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Amodu Tijani v Secretary, Southern Nigeria, [1921] 2 AC 399.
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Adesina, Oluwakemi, Jacob Adesina, Ndidi Olibamoyo and Yemisi Disu. “Silent Protests, Loud Impact: Madam Alimotu Pelewura (1865–1951) and Women’s Activism in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria.” African Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2024, pp. 81–104.
