Badagry

Badagry, town and lagoon port in Lagos state, southwestern Nigeria. It lies on the north bank of Porto Novo Creek, an inland waterway that connects the national capitals of Nigeria (Lagos) and Benin (Porto-Novo), and on a road that leads to Lagos, Ilaro, and Porto-Novo. Founded in the late 1720s by Popo refugees from the wars with the Fon people of Dahomey, Badagry was, for the next century, a notorious exporter of enslaved people to the Americas. A British trading post was established there in the 1820s, and Badagry developed as a palm-oil port for Egbaland to the north and as an importer of European cloth. In the 1830s it attracted formerly enslaved people from Freetown (Sierra Leone), and, in 1842, it became the site of the first European mission (Methodist) in Nigeria. Although the trade route to Abeokuta (56 miles [90 km] north-northeast) was controlled by unfriendly Dahomeyans (whose frequent raids had almost destroyed the town in the late 18th century), Badagry remained a leading port and mission centre—a Yoruba mission (Anglican) was also established in the early 1840s—until the attack in 1851 by the army of Lagos when the city was destroyed by fire. That attack, combined with the constant threat of the Fon and the poor sandy soils in the vicinity, led to a general exodus of the town’s traders, missionaries, and farmers.

Coconut plantations were first established in the vicinity in the 1880s, and modern Badagry exports coconuts, copra, coir (coconut husk fibre), fish, vegetables, and cassava to Lagos (34 miles [55 km] east). After the establishment in the mid-1960s of a factory that makes bags for packing farm products, the collection of kenaf, cultivated for its fibres, became increasingly important. Local trade is primarily in fish, palm oil and kernels, cassava, corn (maize), and coconuts.

Badagry is the seat of a local government council and is mainly inhabited by Popo and Gun peoples. Badagry rapidly became a major residential suburb of Lagos after the opening in 1976 of an expressway. The town has an automotive assembly plant, and it is the site of a college, a secondary school, and several hospitals. Pop. (2006) local government area, 241,093.