Explosive! The Flora Shaw letter that created Nigeria

Flora Shaw and Fredrick Lugard are the god's of the illegally-contrived Nigeria

Ignorantly many have fought for the sake of 'One Nigeria'. Many blood have been spilled to safeguard the geographic entity illegally cobbled together for economic benefits. The only people who have benefited from continued existense of Nigeria are politicians corrupt politicians, their cronies and families. What most people who regard themselves as Nigerians do not know was that the name was given to them by a British journalist.

Today, The Biafran brings to you details of the very first article Flora Shaw wrote to The Times (of London), where she suggested that people from different nationalities, religion, culture and value system be baptized with a name that has no meaning whatsoever to the people inhabiting the geographic space. 

On January 8, 1897, The Times published a special article by Flora Shaw (then anonymously written). This was right before the final amalgamation of the northern and southern nationalities.

The name Nigeria was initially coined for the northern nationalities as could be seen from Shaw's description "The name 'Nigeria' applying to no other portion of Africa may, without offence to any neighbours, be accepted as co-extensive with the territories over which the Royal Niger Company has extended British influence, and may serve to differentiate them equally from the British colonies of Lagos and the Niger Protectorate on the coast [Biafra] and from the French territories of the Upper Niger [Niger Republic]. . .The populations of Nigeria are, like the country which they inhabit, widely diversified. Tribes distinguished by most interesting and remarkable peculiarities occur"

The name Nigeria was initially coined for the northern nationalities

In a followup book titled Tropical Dependency, Shaw expressed her concerns for the new territories the British Government forcefully acquired. 

In her words: "I am of course chiefly concerned with the territories of the protectorate lying on the watershed of the Niger and Benue, of which the administration was only assumed by the British Government on the 1st of January 1900. By this occupation an entirely new chapter has been opened in the relations of Great Britain with West Africa."

She went on to clearly describe the illegality of establishment of Nigeria: "Nigeria—as we call our latest dependency—is not properly a name. It cannot be found upon a map that is ten years old. It is only an English expression which has been made to comprehend a number of native states covering about 500,000 square miles of territory in that part of the world which we call the Western Soudan. Ancient geographers called the same section of Africa sometimes Soudan, sometimes Ethiopia, sometimes Nigritia, sometimes Tekrour, sometimes and more often Genewah or Genowah—which, by the European custom of throwing the accent to the fore part of the word, has become Guinea ; sometimes they called it simply Negroland. 

"Always, and in every form, their name for it meant the Land of the Blacks. Genowah, pronounced with a hard G, is a native word signifying "black." It is so generally used to designate blacks that at the present day, among the Arabs of Egypt and the Moors of Morocco—that is, at both exits from the desert—I have myself heard it applied to the negroes of the Soudan. From the earliest periods of which we have any knowledge, Blackland has stretched, as it stretches now, from the west coast of Africa to the east, along that line of successive waterways which begins with the mouth of the Senegal, and ends only at the southern mouth of the Red Sea."

"Nigeria—as we call our latest dependency—is not properly a name. It cannot be found upon a map that is ten years old." - Flora Shaw

Shaw clearly recognized the existence of various nationalities in the geographic space under the forced control of British colonialist when she stated "Within these limits Nigeria contains many widely differing characteristics of climate, country, and inhabitants. Its history is ancient and is not wanting in dramatic elements of interest and romance."

Biafra has been on the map years before Nigeria was created

According to her "The Hausas, who are generally regarded as forming the most interesting of the races. . . At the beginning of this century they were conquered by the Mahomedan Foulahs, who for about two hundred years had been gradually establishing their domination in the Sudan. The Hausas at that time were pagans, but their civilization claims to be quite as old as that of the Foulahs themselves, and they also came originally into Nigeria from the north, travelling, according to their own traditions, across Africa from Asia. In Nigeria they either drove out or enslaved the original pagan inhabitants and founded several States known geographically as Hausaland.

"The pure-bred Hausa is perfectly black. He is essentially a man of peace as the Foulah is a man of war. The Hausa of today is Mahomedan, having in the matter of religion yielded to the superior enthusiasm of his conquerors. The Hausa language has, however, conquered the language of the Foulah, and is the Court language of Sokoto. 

"The Foulah is a Mahomedan Arab, relatively light coloured, of the well-known type. The Foulah domination over various Hausa States in Nigeria was established in the first instance rather by military than by religious superiority, and gradually rulers of the Foulah race began to take the Place of the Hausa Kings.

"But in the year 1802, a religious war was proclaimed against the H[ausa populations, and resulted in the establishment of a certain Sheikh Othman as Sultan of Sokoto, then, as now, the dominant State. Within a few years all the petty Kings of the Hausa States were replaced by Foulah Emirs, and the Foulah race was definitely established in the position which it holds today as the dominating race of the entire district. On the death of Othman one of his sons inherited the sovereignty of Sokoto, and one the sovereignty of Gandu.

The in depth description of the northern nationalities as shown above in the article, which suggested the name Nigeria, amply demonstrates that Nigeria was for the northern territories (see map above). It was only extended to the southern nationalities as an afterthought at the amalgamation of all the nationalities.