One statement that riles the Yoruba is that Lagos is a no man’s land, which comes mainly from the Igbo residents in the city. The impression that statement gives them is that Lagos is a land that nobody owns. They see it as an attempt to take away what belongs to them. According to Oxford Dictionaries, “no man’s land” means “disputed ground between the front lines or trenches of two opposing armies” or “a piece of unowned land or wasteland.”But Lagos State is someone’s land. Without going into the history of Lagos, one knows that there are traditional institutions and rites in Lagos that only the “sons of the soil” can participate in. For example, Lagos communities have traditional rulers called baale or oba: only sons of the soil of the respective communities can aspire to such positions.
However, that is not the end of the story. Lagos is a unique state, especially given its status as a former federal capital of Nigeria cum seat of government for 77 years: January 1914 to November 1991. That status has given it a different feel from all other cities in Nigeria. It is not because it is by the sea: Calabar and Port Harcourt are also by the sea, but they are not like Lagos. Contrary to the fallacy spread by some people, Calabar was never the capital of Nigeria. Calabar once served as the seat of government of the Niger Coast Protectorate, Southern Protectorate and Oil River Protectorate. Similarly, neither Lokoja nor Zungeru was ever the capital of Nigeria. They were respectively the capital of the British protectorate of Northern Nigeria.
