The Agia Tree Monument in Badagry, Lagos State, marks the exact location where Christianity was first preached in Nigeria, a moment of spiritual significance that occurred in a town haunted by centuries of slave trading. It was under this tree, on September 24, 1842, that Rev. Thomas Birch Freeman, a Wesleyan missionary, delivered the first Christian sermon in the country. Ironically, his voice echoed through a landscape still bruised by the horrors of human trafficking.
Badagry had long been one of West Africa’s busiest slave ports. For over 400 years, enslaved Africans were held in dungeons and compounds, then marched through the “Point of No Return” to awaiting slave ships. The same coast that welcomed the gospel also saw countless souls stripped of freedom and families torn apart.
The Agia Tree itself stood for over 300 years before it fell in a storm in 1959. In its place now stands a monument erected in 2012, a towering white sculpture crowned with a cross, honoring both the dawn of Christianity in Nigeria and the need for remembrance of Badagry’s dual past.
The site serves as a powerful symbol of contrast, the meeting point of faith and suffering, salvation and sorrow. Today, visitors to Badagry often stop at the monument as part of their journey through the town’s slave relics, using the space to reflect on both the hope brought by religion and the cruelty that once stained the same soil.
