On 1 January 1842, the Wesleyan Methodist missionary Thomas Birch Freeman opened a small nursery school in Badagry, on the western edge of present-day Lagos State. It was the first formal classroom in what would later become Nigeria.
The country itself would not exist for another fifty-eight years. The amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates that produced the modern Nigerian state did not happen until 1914. The first Nigerians to receive a structured Western education did so in a Methodist mission room.
The Badagry school is now widely regarded as the seed of formal education in Nigeria. The site of the original mission, near what is today known as the “First Storey Building in Nigeria”, remains a heritage location in Lagos State.