Oba Dosunmu

Dosunmu ascended the throne as Oba of Lagos in 1853 following the death of his father Oba Akitoye. Throughout his thirty-two-year reign, he navigated intense pressure from British colonial administrators determined to seize direct sovereignty over the strategic West African port.

In July 1861, facing British gunboats anchored outside his palace with guns trained on the city, Dosunmu was coerced under threat of immediate destruction into signing the historic Treaty of Cession of Lagos on August 6, 1861. Despite losing sovereign legislative authority, Dosunmu fought relentlessly to ensure that indigenous title to the ancestral land remained vested in the White Cap Chiefs and native families, laying the legal foundation for successful land rights defenses decades later.