By Emeka Esogbue
Love can be strong and conquering. It can decide to bring together or separate close friends and even a father and son. From what begins as ‘love nwantiti’ as they choose to call it in Nigeria. It may blossom into marriage as we now see in Goldie, Lugard, and Shaw, three British imperialists connected to the making of Nigeria, the most populous African country located in West Africa.
Well, this piece is about Sir George Taubman Goldie, Sir Frederick Dealtry Lugard, and Flora Shaw and their romantic history and how the two ‘colonial warriors’ laid down their imperial maxim guns, bibles, arms, and treaties, in their romantic struggle for a beautiful British journalist called Flora Shaw. In the end, Flora Shaw won by marrying a much younger Lugard.
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First, Goldie, Lugard, and Shaw, all came from broken homes and they seemed to inherit it as it played out in their personal lives that impacted their colonial activities in what later became Nigeria.
Lugard’s father, Rev Frederick Gueber Lugard despite being a reverend who worked as British Army Chaplain in Madras, now Chenna in India, married three wives at different times though.
Goldie, the son of Lt Col John Taubman Goldie-Taubman was the youngest son of Caroline Everina, his father’s second wife.
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Flora Shaw, a writer and strong advocate of imperialism was a lover of first, Cecil Rhodes then Goldie and Lugard in present-day Nigeria. Back in Nigeria, her affair started with Goldie but Goldie would not marry her after he lost his wife, Maltida in 1898. This forced Flora Shaw to propose to Goldie but she had her proposal rejected. This is well captured by Margery Perham in her book, “Lugard: The Years of Authority 1898 – 1945.”
In 1886, Lugard while in India, fell in love with a married woman who was very beautiful according to Perham. Lugard went as far as visiting her in London when she left India but he would disastrously find her in the arms of another man thereby ending their romance.
It was after this incident that Lugard encountered another lover in the personality of Dame Flora Louise Shaw. Flora Shaw was the lover of George Goldie, Lugard’s boss and close friend but his love for her was unconcerned about his friendship with Goldie thus, the affair blossomed like a beautiful flower.
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In 1902, the year Lugard and Shaw married, Lugard found himself marrying a lady at 50 years of age who was 6 years older than him. However, love is blind so the affair was water-tight romantically.
Max Siollun, the Author of “A Short History of Conquest and Rule: What Britain Did to Nigeria” recounted that Lugard married Shaw 4 years after she was rejected by Goldie, his closest friend. The Author also told us in this book of history that Lugard’s former lover died 2 years before Lugard’s marriage to Shaw. The unhappy Lugard’s lover, before her death, found some time to write poisonous letters to expose Lugard aiming to wreck the wedding but Lugard was never bothered. He had found love in Shaw after all and moving on with the new lover was what mattered more than looking back.
Incidentally, Flora Shaw, the daughter of Major General George Shaw died 27 years after her marriage while Lugard, her husband lived 17 more years after her death. More disastrously, the marriage did not produce any child causing the barony to become extinct, the wish of Lugard’s ex-lover in India after all.
From the Author of “What Britain Did to Nigeria,” we also know that George Goldie fathered at least 3 children with a woman from Niger Delta and that there were possibly more unrecorded. He thus had great-grandchildren from the unions with local Nigerian women and other countries.
In the end, the three lovers – Goldie, Lugard, and Shaw had proudly given us a country of their own called Nigeria, a country full of promises. Goldie was the real founder of Nigeria. He was the Cecil Rhodes of Nigeria but he hated publicity and forbade his family and close allies from doing a biography in his honor probably because of the secrets he had to keep away from the public. Lugard was merely the one that fulfilled the promises and structures of Goldie and Flora Shaw coined the name, Nigeria to unite the Mohammedans and pagans inhabiting the River Niger. Nigeria was in this way birthed.
All three imperialists despite their imperial schedules found time to struggle in love and romance of themselves.
