Nigeria Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at FindMyPast; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Nigeria

Brazilians in Nigeria
See also: Brazil Emigration and Immigration – Wiki page with additional larger databases which also include Nigerians
 * Brazilians in Nigeria, Amaros or Agudas consist of the descendants of freed Afro-Brazilian slaves who left Brazil and settled in Nigeria. The term Brazilians in Nigeria can also otherwise refer to first generation expatriates from Brazil.
 * Starting from the 1830s, many emancipated Africans who had been through forced labour and discrimination in Brazil began moving back to Lagos. These emancipated Africans were often called "Aguda" or "Amaro", and also included returnees from Cuba.
 * At the height of the Transatlantic slave trade in West Africa, many prisoners of war or those kidnapped for sale in slave markets were sold to Europeans and transported across the Atlantic. Estimates of the number of slaves from the Gulf of Guinea to Brazil totaled about 300,000 in the nineteenth century. The captives disembarked in Bahia before moving further south to work on plantations, assist tradesmen or hawk goods for white Brazilians. As some gained manumission, earned savings or got deported as a result of racism, waves of African migration back to the West African coast developed.
 * The first recorded repatriation of African people from Brazil to what is now Nigeria was a government-led deportation in 1835 in the aftermath of a Yoruba and Hausa rebellion in the city of Salvador known as the Malê Revolt. After the rebellion, the Brazilian government - fearful of further insurrection - allowed freed or manumitted Africans the option to return home or keep paying an exorbitant tax to the government. A few Africans who were free and had saved some money were able to return to Africa as a result of the tough conditions, taxation, racism and homesickness. In 1851, 60 Mina Africans put together $4,000 to charter a ship for Badagry.
 * After slavery was abolished in Cuba and Brazil in 1886 and 1888 respectively, further migration to Lagos continued. Many of the returnees chose to return to Nigeria for cultural, missionary and economic reasons. Many of them descended from the Yoruba. In Lagos, they were given the watery terrains of Popo Aguda as their settlement. By the 1880s, they comprised about 9% of the population of Lagos. Towards the end of 1920, the migration stopped.
 * When Agudas arrived from Bahia and Pernambuco, they took up residence on the Eastern parts of Lagos on land provided by Oba Ojulari. In 1852, this region was demarcated as the Brazilian quarters (what later came to be known as Popo Aguda).
 * Popo Aguda was also a commercial center of trade, serving as a distribution center for imported goods. A sister community of Brazilians also exists in Ago Egba, the Egba colony in Lagos, which is located on the mainland in Ebute Metta.