In pre-colonial times, today's Ogun western portion which is now inhabited by the Egba and Yewa people belonged to the
kingdom of Oyo, which sank into civil war mid 1800s. South of Ogun, on the tiny island of
Lagos, the British had a naval base near which the town of the same name grew rapidly. Until the
Berlin Congo Conference in 1885, Great Britain had focused on a few strategically placed bases for its merchant fleet and navy, such as Lagos and
Calabar, and was not interested in the communities developing there. After the European colonial powers had staked out their spheres of interest 1885 in
Berlin (these were only valid if another power had not previously brought the area in question under its control) the
United Kingdom quickly expanded thusly its territory in the assigned Niger region. Today's Ogun became part of the "Protectorate of Lagos" (as opposed to the
Colony of Lagos; the border between these two is identical to the modern border between
Lagos State and Ogun State—inhabitants of a colony were treated as fully entitled subjects of the British crown, those in protectorates were not) in 1893 and later of the "Protectorate of Yorubaland", in 1906 of the "Protectorate of Southern Nigeria" and in 1914 of the whole of Nigeria. In 1899 it received a railway connection to Lagos, the "Boat Express" ran through Ogun to
Apapa and thus connected the region with the wider world. In 1899, it was several years earlier in this than other regions in West and Central Africa that were not connected to the coast. In the 1930s, Ogun was a centre of the
Nigerian women's movement under the leadership of
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (
Fela Kuti's mother). Democracy in colonial Nigeria after 1922 only existed in Lagos and Calabar; Nigerians could not participate politically elsewhere (see
here). During the 1940s, food was strictly rationed in Nigeria. The transport of food from the more agrarian Ogun to the hungry metropolis of Lagos was severely penalized (Pullen Scheme, see
here). In the first elections in Ogun, 1954, the semi-socialist "Action Group" (AG) under
Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀ became the strongest party in the Western Region, to which Ogun also belonged. After independence in 1960, the
Yoruba region, and Ogun in particular, was engulfed in conflict between the
Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀ and
Samuel Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá fractions of the AG party ("Operation Wetie", see
here). In July 1966, the then ruler of Nigeria,
Johnson Agulyi-Ironsi, was assassinated in
Ibadan in the second coup of the year, which was the prelude to the
Biafra War. The state was formed on 3 February 1976 from part of the former "Western" state. == Geography ==