The origins of First Baptist Church, Lagos and Baptist Academy, Lagos are inseparable; both could be traced to Rev. Joseph M. Harden (an African-American who arrived in Lagos in 1851 as a business agent of the American Baptist Mission to facilitate supplies for missionaries going into the hinterland).

The Baptist Mission first came to Nigeria in 1850 when Rev. Thomas J. Bowen, the pioneer American Baptist missionary, was sent to pioneer Baptist work in Nigeria and to plant churches with indigenous self-governing congregation. He arrived in Nigeria alone without anyone to receive him yet he worked smoothly among the natives, learnt the language and helped in making peace during the war.

A few months before the Bowens left Ijaye for Ogbomosho to start mission work there, a black missionary, Rev. Joseph M. Harden, was transferred from Southern Baptist Conference in Liberia and he opened a station in Lagos in 1851 as an agent of the American Baptist Mission to provide logistic support for missionaries in their mission to penetrate the hinterland. He obtained a piece of land Located at 24 and 24A, Broad Street on Lagos Island, from King Dosumu of Lagos.

He with his wife (Sarah Harden a Sierra Leonese), founded and built Baptist academy on 24A in 1855 as an elementary school. The school started as a collection of 11 boys and 7 girls. They taught them to read and write and the boys were taught carpentry while the girls were taught sewing, cooking and needle work. Rev. Harden had first supervised the building of the First Baptist Church before embarking on the school as a worthy outpost to provide instruction to parishioners’ children. Support for the school and church dwindled in the American Civil War years, 1861-1865 when other missionaries returned to America, leaving Rev. Harden behind. To support mission work, Harden, assisted by his Sierra Leonean wife, Sarah, resorted to brick making at Iddo on the shores of Lagos Island and Mainland.

Thirty years after Baptist Academy started as an elementary school, the secondary school was opened in 1885 on Mission Compound, Broad Street, Lagos by Rev. William J. David – the missionary pastor of First Baptist Church, Lagos. Dr. Samuel Morohundiya Harden, the son of Rev. Joseph Harden, was named as the first principal. Like the elementary school, the secondary arm was also co-educational. By 1886, the school had about 129 boys and 95 girls in the primary section and about 14 boys and 3 girls in the secondary section. Prior to 1926, American pastors of the Baptist Mission acted as principals for the school. In January 1926, Eyo Ita and E.E. Esua joined the staff and in August of that year, Ita became the headmaster of the primary section.

For almost a century, the LBA remained co-educational until Reagan Memorial Baptist Girls’ School was established in 1941. The school was named after Baptist Missionary Lucille Reagan, who served as principal of Baptist academy from 1924 and whose nascent idea was a separate Baptist High School for girls. Unfortunately, before her dream materialized, Miss Reagan died in active service of yellow fever in July 1937.

In 1954, Rev (Dr.) Joseph Adejumo Adegbite, an American trained Baptist theologian and educationist became the first Nigerian principal of the school taking over from Rev. Lane. He had been on the teaching staff of Baptist academy since 1941. By 1955 after 100 years of existence and with 300 boys enrolled, plans were underway to move the academy from the busy Broad street in downtown Lagos to a new and commodious twenty five acre site seven miles from the heart of the city. The movement was necessitated by a surge in student population and the need for greater space for science laboratories and sporting facilities.

In that same centenary year, Baptist Academy celebrated in style by winning the Zard Cup (Later called Principal’s Cup), and most famously, its 4×220 yards relay quartet set a Nigerian national record.

Movement to the new site at Obanikoro mile 7 Ikorodu road, Yaba started in February 9 1957 and the final inauguration was in 1959. To ease the problem of commuting, since most of the students lived on the island, the school levied students for a school bus in 1958 and recorded the feat of being the first school to own a school bus in Lagos and probably Nigeria. The Primary school remained at the Broad Street location until the late nineteen eighties when its building was pulled down in anticipation of expanding the First Baptist Church (adjacent to the school) to include a high-rise business building.

The Higher School Certificate (HSC) (A’Levels) was introduced in 1970 and Baptist Academy again admitted female students through this window in 1973. The Lagos State government in 1975, announced a takeover of all missionary schools in the State from the original founders citing non uniformity in standards, disparity in remuneration and examination and religious imposition or indoctrination as some of the reasons for the takeover.

The takeover however led to the decline in the standard and quality of public education in Lagos State. In response to the numerous concerns, the Lagos State government in 1996, reclassified Baptist Academy as a model college and admitted its first set of model students that year.

Twenty five years after the takeover and following the return to democratic governance in 1999, the Lagos state government heeded the advocacy for the return of public schools to their original founders by returning 48 schools to their original owners. The management and administration of Lagos Baptist Academy was returned to the Nigerian Baptist Convention in 2001.