Few people know the connection between Flora Shaw, the lady that gave Nigeria its name, Kimmage manor, Ireland and Igboland.
Indeed, Flora Shaw, who incidentally has an African root, her mother being from Mauritius-in spite of her husband and first Governor general of Nigeria, Lord Lugard’s racism against Africans whom he regarded as below his white race- is more known for naming Nigeria, from Niger area.
Frederick Lugard said “the typical African … is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self control, discipline and foresight, naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity …in brief , the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children.”
However, many in the country and elsewhere do not know how Igboland influenced Shaw so much that she gave the country the name and inspired a huge number of irish priests to Igboland thereby making that region produce the second largest concentration of seminaries in the world. It is also these Holy Ghost Fathers that saved Biafrans, especially Igbos during the Biafran war when Nigerian almost annihiliated them between 1966-1970. The federal government of Nigeria expelled them after the war.
I myself knew about Lady Flora only as giving Nigeria its name and as being Lugard’s wife. Lugard incidentally signed my grandather’s school leaving certificate. I remember his signature and his comments on the certificate. But not until I bumped into a letter Flora wrote to Lord Luagrad on naming the country Nigeria did I know her Igbo influence and inspiration to the naming of Nigeria.( Read her letter leading to the naming of Nigeria below.)
But most important is the fact that Flora named the country as she surveyed the Igbo country during her tour of the area. The land and the region, its vegetation, people, flora and fauna, history, culture, politics, geography, people etc inspired the Nigeria name in her which she named the country.
The second connection is how she influenced Irish priests to Igboland making the area the send largest concentration of seminaries in the world, especially the Spiritans.
This group, through its Igbo Order in Sons of the Soil, has been helping the catholic church fill its priestly position in this season of priestly dearth.
In fact, their works are being felt in Kenya where they are working in the Kikuyi area, teaching in schools and preaching the Christian word among other charitable works.
But the third connection is the Spiritans, Igbo and Flora’s family house in Ireland. Writing in his classic memoir, The European tribe, Caryl Phillips narrated his conversation with one of the priests that drove the Spiritans to great heights in Igboland.
The priest noted the contribution of the church to the education of Nigerians and how the educated ones won Nigeria independence. He was part of Nigeria’s independence celebrations. The priests Flora brought were mostly in Igboland.
But what the priest did not say was that it was Lady shaw that attracted the priests to Igboland.
Bigard Seminary Enugu
But he did say that the Kimmage Manor was where Lady Shaw was born (ssome say she was born in East London) and is now head of the Spiritan Seminary insitute in the world. The priest spoke Igbo and connected the manor, Flora and his catholic fathers with Igboland.
Manor belonged to Lady Shaw’s grandfather. On the paternal side of her family, her grandfather, Sir Frederick Shaw (1799-1876) of Dublin, was a member of parliament from 1830-1848, and widely regarded as the leader of the Irish Conservatives.
Although Flora and the rest of her siblings were baptised as Roman Catholics in accordance with their mother’s faith, they were raised in their father’s Anglo-Irish Protestant tradition. These beliefs were challenged as Flora underwent a crisis of faith in the course of her mother’s final illness, during which she maintained a close correspondence with Father Lloyd Coghlan, a Catholic priest. . Indeed, Flora was Irish with african blood and roots.
Below are some of the letters and Flora’s bio data as it connects with the Igbo.
LETTER TO LUGARD FROM FLORA SHAW
Here in this white bread, with a burning lamp and an overflowing pool of thoughts, I put ink on paper. Though it is not much compared to that at Woolwich, I like the shelter here. In the mornings, the window at the back of the house presents the young bronze sun with a thousand birds streaking beneath, appearing like moving black dots on the crystal sky.
The evenings are not any less artistic. These times from the sitting room window, I will watch the dashing aged sun melt into the distant horizon where the earth keeps a date with it, beautiful and sweet, like an orange sliced in two, and then of course the noisy birds would prance through again, appearing this time like a painting.
I mustn’t fail to tell you of Bundu- A fourteen year old lad from the eastern tribe, he has been my house help and tour guide. This boy, with skin of ebony and deep darting eyes picks up the English language in a day faster than I could do French in a year. He is like a 
cat, highly intelligent, humble and introverted. The other day when Whittingham and Darlington visited they called him a ‘clean imperial material’ and I didn’t particularly find that patriotic, as did Bundu.
Bundu tells me of this land as if they came into being before his very eyes, he talks of distant wars and stories that seems only valid in an epic novels with mind stretching fiction- still, I know with the little I have seen around that they are as true as water.
I must tell you how I met this unusual lad – before Bundu, my guide had been Osifor, a brash young man with feminine brilliance and unearthly features, though articulate in the languages, I found him rather too ambitious.
It was Osifor who took me round the eastern tribe to a village whose name I have long given up on pronouncing but should sound more like an ‘Ama Enedibo Cha’. There at Ama Enedibo Cha, I met the chief whose name my indomitable pen has neither the wits nor the grace to attempt. The chief, very charismatic in my eyes, organised a carnival in my honour; they thought me the Queen. Oh! Lord Lugard how hospitable are these people of the central Sudan!?
The carnival proper was a bonfire of sort. There were drummers ebulliently pounding stretched lion skin on carved wood. Strong dark lasses, vibrated their beaded waists very dramatically, yet to the rhythm of the drummers. Then, there came the wrestlers, fierce looking lads with globules of sweat dotted on their godly frame. They remind me of gladiators, only more natural, more majestic and less cynical. They fought fiercely- the wrestlers, twisting themselves this way and that with skill, precision, and super human strength more towering than the bridge at Stamford.
May I suggest that the royal army of Queen Victoria put these men into consideration? The entire occasion, just a tad beneath its crescendo rammed into a wall most unfortunate. He was brought in, scantily clothed, tied like an animal with raffia palm fronds. The palace guards, who were no less gigantic than the wrestlers hurled him this way and that, crashed his good natured face on the brown earth, then they placed him on something, something strange though it easily could be an alter.
“Separate his cursed head from the body”, the chief ordered with the impression that my adrenaline was as surging as that of the cheering crowd.
“What’s his offence?”
“He is an Osu.” The chief told me, grinning broadly.
“What’s an Osu?”
Then the chief still grinning cynically, in a bid to convince me that the lad needed execution, began his narration
“You see madam, the origin of the Osu’s are very much conflicting. In the version we believe here, they were slaves who committed a sacrilege by stealing from the gods and then eloping with their loots into many villages. They attract curses the way palm oil attracts ants, it was their unsuspecting hosts who suffered more. Any land they go yield no crops, streams dry up, epidemics seizes all the young ones and so on and so forth. The gods curse any land they set their feet on’
“How do you identify one?” I asked him.
“As soon as we begin to get the first signs we consult the oracle, who shows them to us. Besides that, they are easy to spot. They steal, kill, deflower all the young women or in the case of a female Osu they lay with half the men in the land. They are worse than witches”.
“I don’t care, I want that boy spared” I demanded.
“Madam you don’t know these people, they are bad. If you see a snake and an Osu in the bush, kill the Osu before you kill the snake”. The chief told me.
“Untie him” I commanded.
“Okay madam but we cannot let him stay here; we shall banish him in the stead”.
“I will take him”.
“But madam these people are…”
“Humans! Untie him”.
They untied the boy and brought him towards me. The boy stared at me with eyes like a burning glass and a countenance that belonged to an angered demon. At first I was afraid of this lad, but that fear soon dissolved when he said ‘Thank you, Queen of London’
“Call me lady Lugard, what’s your name?”
He said his name is Bundu, This Bundu, I write to you about. The Bundu Wittingham and Darlington called a clean imperial product.
That fateful day the gentlemen visited, I seemed to have been possessed by demons. I did a thing most unlady-like by walking them out of my cottage for no reason I can debate upon. That night, I attempted finishing the last paragraph of my novel in vain. Perhaps I had hit a writer’s bloc as words happily eluded me; I tried and tried but only earned a migraine. I would have made with a cup of tea only that Bundu was fast asleep in the sitting room couch and I thought it rude to wake him up. So, I went out into the cold night to find some peace. And peace I did find.
That night, the flowers waltzed with the gently whirling winds. The air was blue, easy to soak in, cooling to my nerves. Then there came- first as faint distant drones- drumbeats from another village. Feelings of nostalgia instantly sipped through me. I have heard these same drums in over a hundred villages I have been to in this land. For a people so strong, so diverse, so nourished by culture and nature, I think together they will make a formidable brand. I discarded the novel that night and rather did an article for THE TIMES.
In that article I bring to surface the beauty of this land which is packaged in poetry and history and magic. I highlighted a good deal of the gains of amalgamation for both the tribes and the crown. I honestly think the name ‘Royal Niger Company Territories’ is a tad too long, also the popularised name of ‘Central Sudan’ by merchants and diplomats is highly unrepresentative of people of these parts. The river Niger causes countless fantasies from not just romantics but people all around the world. I sincerely believe the Niger area, which should be spelt as Nigeria is as convenient as it is romantic.
I anticipate a reply.
Thank you
Flora Shaw
https://udumakalu.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/ireland-catholic-church-and-flora-shaws-igbo-roots-with-nigeria/
