The Lady Ojukwu Loved and Lost

Lady Iro Hunt pictured in the 1980s. (Photo credit: Giorgos Lanitis).

Greek-Cypriot heiress Iro Myrianthousi who was the publisher of Lagos This Week.

She was the niece of the Greek-Cypriot business brothers A.G. and C.P. Leventis who established a large trading firm in Nigeria and several other West African countries. She trained as a social worker in England before becoming the proprietor of the Lagos-based magazine.

Photographed in the 1980s.

NB.

There was apparently a "tug-of-love" between Sir David Hunt, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria (1967-1969), and Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu over Myrianthousi.

Many, including the author Michael Gould, have speculated that much of Ojukwu's antipathy towards Britain emanated from the love rivalry with Hunt which Ojukwu lost.

Michael Gould: " I feel he was very distressed to hear of Iro’s marriage to David Hunt, and I think much of his antipathy towards Britain during the war emanated from the fact that he and Iro had had an intense relationship, and that his sentiment for Britain was coloured by this union ... There is definite acrimony between Iro Hunt and Ojukwu, because he always sends her Christmas cards, signed with his love, and she gets very agitated on receiving them because, as she said, of the way he behaved towards Hunt during the war. Ojukwu seems to have come to terms with the past, but Lady Hunt is in an unforgiving mood, even intimating that Ojukwu’s vitriol towards Hunt led to his health being undermined."

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.