Cemeteries like Ikoyi and Ajele are not merely burial grounds; they are historical texts—repositories of memory that trace Lagos’s transformation from a colonial port city to a sprawling postcolonial metropolis. These spaces matter because they reflect how a society chooses to remember and just as importantly, who it chooses to forget. In their prime, both cemeteries were deeply respected—Ajele representing an older cosmopolitan Lagos shaped by Afro-Brazilian, Saro and Creole elites and Ikoyi emerging as a curated site of prestige tied to the city’s expanding administrative and residential elite. Their layouts, materials and inscriptions—marble cherubim, gothic tombstones, angelic motifs—were deliberate acts of memory-making, projecting values of piety, class and legacy.

For decades, these cemeteries were tended as sacred civic spaces, where visitors came to mourn, reflect and connect with Lagos’s past. Ikoyi Cemetery, in particular, was orderly and well-maintained, a landscaped archive that reflected the dignity of those interred. Ajele, nestled in the colonial heart of Lagos, held generations of distinguished African families whose names once shaped education, commerce and governance.

Today, however, Ikoyi faces a slow and painful erasure. Urban pressures and population growth have turned Ikoyi into a cluttered sprawl where graves are layered without care and older tombs are paved over or lost beneath newer ones. Walkways have vanished and the spatial logic of remembrance has collapsed into chaos. Ajele suffered even more, now repurposed as the Campos Memorial Mini Stadium after decades of lying empty in ruins and sidelined in public memory. Their neglect is not just a logistical issue; it signals a broader societal shift in how history, death and civic responsibility are valued. Preserving Ikoyi Cemetery means preserving Lagos’s layered identity—its cosmopolitan roots, its histories of African agency under colonial rule and the urban narratives of aspiration, migration and memory. To let them fall into disrepair is to allow those narratives to be buried once again, this time not by earth, but by indifference. In a city constantly reinventing itself, these burial grounds offer a rare stillness—a place where Lagos’s past and present meet and where its future might still learn to remember.

Speaking with architectural designer, Ọlọ́runfẹ́mi Adéwuyì, on the subject, he believes that our lack of maintenance culture, rooted in extractive traditions and a disregard for multifunctional spaces, undermines the potential of burial sites to serve as vibrant urban spaces that honour memory while fostering sustainability. He said:

The neglect of burial spaces stems from a broader lack of maintenance culture and a failure to treat such places with dignity. With limited resources, single-use spaces are unsustainable. Instead, cemeteries should be reimagined to serve multiple functions, like parks or memorial spaces, to ensure their relevance, upkeep, and long-term survival.

I think the root of the problem is that we don’t have a philosophy or psychology of care. From my perspective, our relationship with land and space in Africa has often been extractive rather than nurturing. I’m not sure we’ve ever really developed African landscaping traditions that reflect care rather than just taking, whether it’s for food, herbs, or other resources. To me, this speaks to a deeper cultural issue, one that’s been ingrained for a long time and that we need to consciously evolve beyond.

Another perspective is that people often lack awareness of the site’s significance—its stories, histories, and those buried there. The issue is that we treat it as distant history rather than living memory. If we reframe it as memory—something people can connect with—it could become an urban open-air museum, blending remembrance with multiple uses and deeper public engagement.