Ibadan

Ibadan is the capital of Oyo State in southwestern Nigeria, built on a group of hills northeast of Lagos. The University of Ibadan, founded in 1948 as a college of the University of London, was the first university in Nigeria.

Ibadan grew in the 1820s from a settlement of Yoruba groups who moved onto its hills, and it became one of the main Yoruba city states of the 19th century. The railway from Lagos reached the city at the turn of the 20th century, and Ibadan became a trading center for cocoa grown on the farms of the region. In the 1950s it was the capital of the Western Region of Nigeria, and the cocoa revenue paid for schools, roads and the first television station in Africa. Wole Soyinka, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, studied at the university and began writing plays there.

Cocoa from the farms of Oyo State is traded through dealers in Ibadan and sent to Lagos for export. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, with its head office and research farms in the city, breeds new varieties of cassava, yam and maize for Africa. Amala, a dark paste of yam flour served with ewedu soup, is a common dish of the food stalls of the city.

Cocoa House, finished in 1965, was the first skyscraper in tropical Africa and was paid for with the profits of the cocoa marketing board. Bower's Tower, on the hill of Oke Aare, gives a view over the brown tin roofs of the old city. Mapo Hall, a colonial town hall with Greek columns, stands on a hill in the center. The Liberty Stadium, opened in the early 1960s, was one of the first modern sports stadiums in Africa.