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7th January, 1897 - “Nigeria” Appeared for the First Time in British Newspaper, The Times of London.

On this day in history 1897, a name that did not yet belong to a people, but to an imperial idea, appeared quietly in print for the first time. In The Times of London, Lady Flora Shaw, a British journalist and colonial thinker, proposed a simple, flowing word to describe Britain’s vast West African holdings along the River Niger: “Nigeria.”

At the time, the land itself did not exist as a country. What existed were territories carved out by European powers during the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where Africa was partitioned on maps in distant European halls.

Flora Shaw’s idea was published in 1897, drawn from the River Niger, It was meant to simplify administration, not to reflect identity. In her words, “Nigeria” would replace the cumbersome phrase “the British territories on the Niger.” What began as a newspaper suggestion soon became official language.

By 1900, the British colonial administration formally adopted the name Nigeria. The territory was split into two unequal parts: the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria and the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, each governed separately, funded differently, and developed at different paces. The North was largely administered through indirect rule and financed by British subsidies, while the South, richer from trade and customs duties, bore much of its own administrative cost.

Then came 1 January 1914.

Lord Frederick Lugard, acting on imperial logic rather than social harmony, merged the two protectorates into one entity: the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.

Thus, Nigeria was born twice:
• first as a word in 1897,
• and then as a political entity in 1914.

What began as a colonial convenience would, decades later, become the identity of Africa’s most populous nation—a name imagined by empire, but reshaped by history, struggle, and the people who came to own it.

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