Before the creation of the States in 1967, the identity of Lagos was restricted to the Lagos Island of Eko (Bini world for war camp). The first settlers in Eko were the Aworis, were mostly hunters and fishermen. They had migrated from Ile-Ife by stages to the coast at Ebute-Metta.

The Aworis were later reinforced by a band of Bini warriors and joined later by other Yoruba elements who settled on the mainland for a while till the danger of an attack by he warring tribes plaguing Yorubaland drove them to seek the security of the nearest island, Iddo, from where they spread to Eko.

By 1851 after the abolition of the slave trade, there was a great attracton to Lagos by the repatriates. First were the Saro, mainly freed Yoruba captives and their descendants who have been set ashore in Sierra leone, responded to the pull of their homeland , and returned in successive waves to Lagos. They were granted land to settle in the Olowogbowo and Breadfruit areas of the island.

The Brazillans returnee, the Aguda, also started arriving in Lagos in the mid-19^th Century and brought with them the skills they had acquired in Brazil. Most of them were master-builders, carpenters and masons, and gave the distinct charastersitics of Brazillian architecture to their residential buildings at Bamgbose and Campos Square areas which from a large proportion of architectural richness of the city.

The other two groups of Lagos State citizens are the Ogu people of Badagry and its environs, and the Ijebu in Ikorodu and Epe Local Governments.

Badagry town houses the first story building in Nigeria, built in 1845 and still standing on its original site.

Badagry´s original name was Gbagle a contraction of the word Ogbaglee, meaning in Ogu (not Egun as commonly mis-pronounces and mis-spelt) “a farmland near the swamp”. The Ogu people are historically reputed to have migrated from the ancient Ketu,(part of Oduduwa’s Kingdom) and they left Ile-ife around the mid-13^th.Century, for Accra in Gold Coast. The Ga/Ewe(Aja-Ogu) speking group of today´s Ghana are indeed the kith and kin of the Ogu of Badagry. The history of Badagry has a fascinating tradition of Kingship (Wheno-Aholu) and local administration. The ancient town of Badagry is divided into eight quarters nameiy:Jegba, Ahoriko, Awhanjigoh, Boekoh, Persuka, Wharakoh and Ganho and its adjoinining villages on both the mainland and island, have for century recognised the Wheno Aholu Akran of Badagry, of which there have been seventeen from the earliest time to the present Akran, Menu Toyi I crowned in 1977.

The Ijebu people of the Epe and Ikorodu Lokal Government areas share a collective heritage with their kith and kin in the present day of Ogun State, but have also developed strong trade and cultural links with the entire riverine coastline of Nigeria, with its interlaced pattern of waters and creeks which empty into the lagoon and the Atlantic ocean, By the turn of this century, through administrative sleight of hand by the British, all the major towns and settlements of the two areas had been annexed as part of the “colony” and the amalgamation in 1914 finally merged Ikorodu with the protectorate.