FREEDOM PARK LAGOS: The Former Prison That Tells the Story of Nigeria’s Independence (SEE PHOTOS)

The story of Freedom Park will not be complete without telling the chain of events that led to its existence. Let’s now go back in time to how it all started.

Lagos Falls

In 1861, the British gunship, Prometheus, threatened the Oba of Lagos, Oba Dosunmu (1853-1885). Following this event, he acceded and handed over Lagos to the then Queen of England, Victoria, effectively making Lagos Island a colony of the British. 

With the annexation and subsequent colonisation of Lagos, and then Nigeria, a formal system of control based on the British common law was created by the British to enforce order and protect their economic interests. And in 1876, the colonial government passed the prisons ordnance that introduced their own concept of crime and criminal justice to the colony.

Her Majesty’s Prisons Is Built

The first police force in what will later come to be known as Nigeria started in 1861 with a formation of 30 Hausa men by Marcus Creed, then Governor of  Lagos colony. This grew into a 100-man armed police force in 1862, and the 600 armed Hausa force in 1863 – the name came about because the force was largely made up of Hausa-speaking former slaves from Sierra Leone. Because the British criminal justice system allowed for the creation of the penal system, this prompted the design and construction of prisons.

Hence in 1872, eleven years after Lagos island was ceded, the British built Her Majesty’s Prisons – which later came to be known as the Broad Street Prisons. It was originally built with mud and roofed with thatch, but because it kept on catching fire, the British imported bricks from England at the cost of £16,000 and was initially built and designed to hold about 20 prisoners.

The Prisons’ Famous Inmates

In the years leading to Nigeria’s independence, the prison was a maximum security prison where political prisoners were kept. By the time Nigeria got her independence in 1960, Lagos had been under British rule for 100 years. And throughout its period of use from 1885, the Broad Street Prisons held some of Nigeria’s foremost activists and nationalists like Herbert Macaulay, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Lateef Jakande, and Michael Imodu who all served time there at one point or the other due to their political beliefs and activism.

• Herbert Macaulay was a political leader, civil engineer and journalist, He’s reputed as being one of the founders of Nigerian nationalism and activism against British colonial rule and expansion which was oppressive to Nigerians, as they were the ones who paid for such expansion in the form of increased taxes (remember the Aba Women Riot?)
• Pa Michael Imodu was the first leader of Nigeria’s organised labour movement and fought for better wages and working conditions for Nigerian workers during colonial rule and in the early decades of post-independent Nigeria.
• Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria’s foremost statesmen, political and anti-colonial leaders was imprisoned here in 1963 while undergoing trials for charges of treasonable felony for purportedly conspiring to overthrow the federal government along with some other members of his Action Group political party. 

There’s even a myth that Chief Awolowo placed a curse on the place, the curse of which was responsible for the site being in a derelict, undeveloped state for decades until its transformation into a park!

Old Broad Street Prisons Becomes Freedom Park!

In preserving the history of this place for future generations, the Lagos State Government in collaboration with a group of architects led by Theo Lawson chose to recreate this former space of oppression and colonialism into a memorial park.

See Pictures:

The former Records Office is converted to a museum

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The Old Prison block is converted to a food court. The food court is a replica of the old cell blocks, which measured 4 feet by 8 feet (the standard size of a plywood!)

The Gallows (where hangings took place) became a stage for theatrical and musical performance

And the rest of the grounds

Its east wall is adjacent St Nicholas Hospital, and is just a few metres away from the General Hospital, Lagos and the Lagos Island Maternity Hospital. Why not visit with your friends and family this Independence holiday to relive and better appreciate the sacrifice and labours of our heroes past?

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