What Celia did to Lugard, Nigerians suffer.
During my first PhD, one of my professors said that "Nigeria as a country was a product of an armed robber and a “prostitute.” To me, that is slightly accurate, but more than that, it was the product of two broken people.
Many Nigerians have read about Flora Shaw, the woman who gave the name of the country as it is known today, but very few people have read about Celia. Celia was the lady who served Lugard “breakfast” (heartbreak) so that he almost lost his mind. In search of conquest, he had found himself in Lucknow, India, where he met Celia.
Celia was a divorced woman with whom he shared a romantic affair and who showed Lugard the love he never knew. Lugard was on tour when she sent the message that she was sick. Lugard abandons his tour to return to India only to find out that Celia has recovered from her illness and traveled back to England. Lugard headed straight to England to find Celia in the arms of another man. It broke him so badly, to the point he almost lost his mind.
After “recovering” from the heartbreak (which I doubt given his administrative style and what we know about trauma), he was brought to Nigeria as the “man on the spot,” and as some scholars suggest, Nigeria became the recipient of the control and dominance he wished to have lauded over Celia.
Years later he would meet Floral Shaw, who was also recovering from heartbreak. Both individuals, as some historians suggest, are credited with giving the name Nigeria.
The decision of two heartbroken people entangled with a multiplicity of factors has created a broken system that continues to break lives and properties.
This is not fiction; see comment for book references
We can sometimes understand professional and national pain when we pay attention to the personal lives of people, groups, and leaders because sometimes, they feed each other. At times, a nation can reflect the unique characteristics of its leader, just as followers may emulate their leadership style. Idiosyncrasies of leaders can be a product of unhealed trauma.
Nigeria as a nation needs healing, one that requires having difficult conversations about how individual and group brokenness impacts the foundation of our nation and its traits.
This country was a product of struggle for power, conquest, and conditioning to inflict pain we wish upon our common enemies, on ourselves, and on other victims like us. The 1884 Berlin Conference was the gathering of power-hungry, dominion- and conquest-obsessed individuals and countries.
To heal “unhealable” hurts and move forward, we must acknowledge individual and group hurts that have become the collective hurts that have metamorphosed into national wounds.
In my next post, I will offer suggestions for consideration, among many that others have shared regarding our national healing.
Two more posts and I will return to my grind. Like Pilate, I will wash my hands and move on, but history will remember I was never silent.
References
Matera, Marc, Misty L. Bastian, S. Kingsley Kent, and Susan Kingsley Kent. The women's war of 1929: Gender and violence in colonial Nigeria. Springer, 2011. See pp. 71-75.
Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Adventure 1858-1898, see pp. 59-74.
