2025 LAGOS CONFERENCE – DAY 1
The Director of the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, Research Professor Ayo Yusuff delivered the welcome address at the 2025 Lagos conference on September 25, 2025. He emphasised the concept of the city, asserting that Lagos should be regarded not merely as a geographic location but as a dynamic hub of culture, commerce, and history in continuous evolution.
He also announced plans to establish a Lagos Research Centre, which will serve as a dedicated centre for examining the city’s socio-political landscape, urban development, and cultural economy.
Delivering the keynote address on behalf of the Pro-Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Bashir Animashaun presented a paper titled “Historicising Lagos: The Nexus between Indigeneity and Citizenship in a Megacity.”
He directly contested the notion of Lagos as “no man’s land,” instead positioning the Awori, Ijebu, and Ogu-speaking peoples as the city’s legitimate indigenous custodians.
Professor Animashaun framed Lagos as a “hybrid city,” characterized by a dynamic tension between the traditional authority of the omo onile (indigenous landowners) and its cosmopolitan character, which has been profoundly shaped by the contributions of Igbo, Hausa, Ghanaian, Togolese, and other Yoruba migrants.
The presentation emphasized the persistent complexity of negotiating citizenship, examining it through the dual lenses of legal status and cultural belonging
Professor Abraham Osinubi, Dean of the School of Postgraduate Studies, speaking on behalf of the Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos, Professor Folasade T. Ogunsola, OON, FAS, remarked, “To understand Lagos is to understand a city that is both local and global; where history whispers through Badagry’s streets, commerce roars at Apapa’s docks, and creativity blooms in the music and fashion hubs of Ikeja”
Dr. Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi of Howard University delivered the second keynote speech virtually entitled “Who Broke Lagos?”: Reinventing Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Eko.
Using a spatial and cultural perspective, she examined Eko, the city’s historic core. Her presentation uncovered how colonial and postcolonial planning, through maps and urban design, disrupted indigenous relationships with space and Lagos’s urban identity.
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