This paper examines the history of the postal service of Lagos during the period when it was a British Colony. It uses the available written sources, analysis of the geographical location of major buildings, as well as the significant philatelic record contained in stamps, letters and their envelopes and postcards. With Lagos a major administrative centre and commercial hub, there was much mail coming in and going out of the town. The colonialist needed to organise it into a postal administrative service along the lines of what pertained in Britain.
Histories of government departments or ministries have hardly begun in Nigeria, but all such institutions would bear closer examination across both colonial and independent eras. Efficient administrations are at the root of the contemporary for quest for good governance, making the civil service into a bureaucracy which can formulate and implement good policies for positive economic and social change among all the citizens of Nigeria.
Though the research process is in its formative stages, this paper seeks to fully describe the chronology of the developments of the postal service and explain the consequences for the people of Lagos, and the wider society and economy.
The paper will be accompanied by a presentation of some of the philatelic material held by the author, who is a historian of Nigeria, having written many academic papers on the liquor trade and juvenile delinquency, as well as the Pre-1914 Nigeria Study Editor for the West African Study Circle, a long-standing global philatelic organisation.