‘A Crying Nuisance’: The Sanitary Condition of Nineteenth Century Lagos

Abstract

Since the early 19th century, colonial anthropologists, geographers, historians and public health experts have continued to focus scholarly attention on Lagos, which was once a fishing Awori village along the West Coast of Africa. Diseases outbreaks and urban sanitation was one of the greatest challenges that confronted 19th and 20th centuries Lagos. Lagos, one of the most prized assets of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries, became a focus of numerous sanitary reforms aimed at making it suitable for habitation for European merchants and colonial officials. While Lagos was famous for its economic and commercial potentials, public health problems were a major concern of its successive colonial and post-colonial administrators. This paper brings to the fore the politics of public health in the 19th century Lagos. The paper illuminates our understanding of how public health became a subject of intense political debates between leading colonial medical officials and African educated elite.