LAGOS MY STATE
WHO OWNS LAGOS? HISTORY 101:POINT OF INFORMATION
"By 1872 Lagos was a cosmopolitan trading center with a population of over 60,000 people.Colonial Lagos developed into a busy, cosmopolitan port, with an architecture that blended Victorian and Brazilian styles.The Brazilian element was imparted by skilled builders and masons who had returned from Brazil Th.e black elite was composed of English-speaking "Saros" from Sierra Leone and other emancipated slaves who had been repatriated from Brazil and Cuba.By 1872 the population of the colony was over 60,000, of whom less than 100 were of European
origin.
In 1876 imports were valued at £476,813 and exports at £619,260. Telephone links with Britain were established by 1886, and electric street lighting in 1898.In August 1896, Charles Joseph George and G.W. Neville,both merchants and both unofficial members of the Legislative Council, presented a petition urging construction of the railway terminus on Lagos Island rather than at Ido, and also asking for the railway to be extended to Abeokuta. Lagos history is rich in Yoruba tradition,trade and
commerce,infrastructural development and cosmopolitanism." -EXTRACTED
With the little facts above, I would like to educate some illiterates making stupid assumption from blind sentiments that they developed Lagos.
Lagosians had telephone presence in 1886, Itu and Calabar got connected to Telephone in 1923, while between 1946 and 1952, a three-channel line carrier system was commissioned between Lagos and Ibadan and was later extended to Oshogbo, Kaduna, Kano, Benin, and Enugu. Communication technology is a major signifier of civilizations and if Lagosians were already making telephone calls more than 70 years before your daddies, where then did you get the warped idea that you came to develop Lagos?
By 1856 Cable and Wireless Company of the UK had commissioned a submarine cable link between Lagos and London and In 1851 a post office was established in Lagos; all these before of the emergence of Nigeria as an amalgamated country. If I may ask again, where did the stupid idea that Igbo developed Lagos came from? Or that Lagos was developed with Nigeria's money when Lagos was not even part of Nigeria until 1914.
I always feel embarrassed anytime I read and hear even so-called educated people from the East making these stupid assertions.
The first Yoruba lawyer Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams was called to the English Bar in 1879 whilst the first Igbo lawyer, Sir Louis Mbanefo, was called to the English bar in 1937. Again the first Yoruba medical practitioner, Dr. Nathaniel King, graduated in 1875 from the University of Edinburgh whilst the first Igbo medical practitioner, Dr. Akannu Ibiam, graduated from another Scottish University in 1935. Again I ask, where did the ignorant hypothesis of the backward Yoruba race who needed development by the superior Igbo race come from? For the sake of our generation and posterity we need to teach factual history and not just cook up some cock and bull ego-centric concoctions as facts. The attitude of recycling long tales steeped in empty arrogance should be discarded before you miseducate your kids with fictions.
Awolowo will continue to be the Yoruba hero not because of blind followership but because he gave his people the system of free education, free healthcare and he introduced Television to the Yoruba; making Yorubaland the first region to have a TV station in Africa all done with revenues from Cocoa. It is crass ignorance and naked buffonery to claim Lagos was built with Nigeria's money. In addition, where did the foolish idea that the Igbo brought civilization to Lagos and Yoruba-land come from?
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