Ikeja is the capital of Lagos State. Lagos city is not the capital of anything today: it was the capital of Nigeria until 12 December 1991, when the federal government moved to Abuja.
"Lagos" names two places, and the answer depends on which one is meant.
Lagos State was created in 1967 and covers about 3,600 square kilometres, the smallest state in Nigeria by area and the largest by population. Its capital is Ikeja, in the north of the metropolitan area, where the governor, the State House of Assembly and the state ministries sit. The record panel above carries the year the dataset holds for that relation.
Lagos the city is the commercial centre of Nigeria and one of the largest urban areas in Africa. It was the capital of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria and then of independent Nigeria from 1960, and it stopped being the capital on 12 December 1991, when the government moved to Abuja.
The move had been decided fifteen years earlier: the Federal Capital Territory was created in 1976 in the centre of the country, and building at Abuja took until the end of the 1980s. Lagos kept the ministries for years after the formal move, and a few federal agencies never left.
Lagos city sits inside Lagos State but is not its capital, and it was a national capital within living memory. Both facts point the wrong way at once.
The places above come from GeoNames, reconciled against Wikidata. Last checked 21 September 2026. How we know · Suggest a correction