Badagry is a former Atlantic slave-trade port two hours west of Lagos, almost on the Benin border. It was one of the busiest slaving ports in West Africa for three centuries, and the small town museums document the trade with chilling specificity: the Mobee Family Slave Relics Museum displays leg irons, neck chains, and a slave trader's family photographs; the Brazilian Barracoon, the warehouse where the captured were held, has been preserved; and the Point of No Return on the beach is the spot from which the marched-out people boarded the waiting ships. A confronting, important day trip from Lagos.
Badagry
Coastal slave-trade town two hours west of Lagos
A story
The Point of No Return on the beach at Badagry is the spot from which an estimated 550,000 enslaved Africans were marched onto the waiting Portuguese, French, Dutch, British, and Brazilian ships between the late 1500s and 1851. A simple memorial stone now marks the place.