Funmilayo
Ransome Kuti (25 October 1900 Abeokuta, Nigeria - 13 April 1978 Lagos, Nigeria)
popularly known as FRK was a celebrated women`s right activist of her time.
This hard core lady, prolific woman nationalist and representative of the
feminist cause in her country and internationally started her powerful fight
for suffrage and equal rights for her countrywomen long before the second wave
of the women's movement in the United States. She was also a teacher, political
campaigner, and traditional aristocrat. She served with distinction as one of
the most prominent leaders of her generation. Mrs Ransome-Kuti was the first
woman in Nigeria to drive car !
Ransome-Kuti
was born on October 25, 1900 in Abeokuta, Ogun State. to Yoruba
parents, Daniel Olumeyuwa Thomas and Lucretia Phyllis Omoyeni Adeosolu. She was
named Francis Abigail . Her father, was the son of a repatriated
slave from Sierra Leone, who traced his ancestral history back to Abeokuta in
what is today Ogun State, Nigeria. He became a member of the Anglican Faith,
and soon returned to the homeland of his fellow Egbas.. She
attended St John’s Primary School, Igbe in Abeokuta from 1906 to 1913. In 1914,
she became a student at the Abeokuta Girls' Grammar School, a Christian
missionary school founded in 1908. She took her Preceptor’s Examination at the
Grammar School and taught there until May 1919 when she was sponsored by the
Church Missionary Society and her father’s cousin, a UAC
agent, to study in England.
Ransome-Kuti enrolled at Wincham Hall College where she studied domestic sciences,
education, French and music. She decided to drop the names Frances and Abigail
and to be known only by her shortened third name, Funmilayo. Upon receiving her
teaching credentials, she returned to Nigeria in 1922 and taught at the
Abeokuta Girls' Grammar School from 1923 to 1924. Reverend Ransome-Kuti became
the first president of the Nigeria Union of
Teachers (NUT) from 1931 to 1954; the NUT was the first multi-ethnic
and nationalist association in the country. He was also a human rights activist
On 20 January 1925,
she married the Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome Kuti. He also defended the
commoners of his country, and was one of the founders of both the Nigeria Union
of Teachers and of the Nigerian Union of Students..
In the 1970s,
decades after the death of her husband, she (along with her youngest son Fela)
changed her last name to Anikulapo-Kuti; Anikulapo is a Yoruba word that
roughly translates to “warrior who carries powerful protection” or “he who
carries death in his pouch.”.
Madam
Ransome-Kuti`s’s was known throughout her career as an educator and activist.
Well educated with a colonial education and a Christian background. Her
international career began when together with her husband and their close
friend Ladipo Solanke created the infamous West African Student’s Union (WASU).
They provided support for West African students studying in London in 1925,
WASU promoted nationalist and anti-colonial movements in British West Africa.
A list of life long members of WASU reads like a WHO’s WHO of West
African leaders and activists: Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief H O Davies, Aliyi
Ekineh, H A Korsah of Gold Coast, Dr Taylor-Cummings of Sierra Leone, the Alake
of Abeokuta, Emir of Kano and Asantehene of Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah and Joe
Appiah were vice presidents in 1946. WASU was a huge influence on many
West African students of the day and played a major part in the independence
movements of West African countries. FRK and her husband acted as agents
in Nigeria raising funds and distributing pamphlets for the union.
Mrs
Anikulapo-Kuti embraced her Yoruba heritage and worked to give pride back to
the colonized, insisting that children at her school were registered using
their African, rather than European names. She abandoned her Western style of
dress, favoured by middle class women in the late 40s, adopting the traditional
wrapped cloth of the lower classed market traders, and gave speeches
exclusively in Yoruba, necessitating the British to find translators to
interpret her words.
She also received
the national honor of membership in the Order of Nigeria in 1965. The
University of Ibadan bestowed upon her the honorary doctorate of laws in
1968.
In 1947, the
Nigerian Union of Students (led by Ransome-Kuti’s husband) became the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the
party of the first Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe. She became a key member of the NCNC as a
result of her close association with its roots and led the women’s wing of the
party. Azikiwe selected her as the representative of the women of Nigeria as
well as of the Western Region for the NCNC delegation that travelled to London
in 1947. She was elected treasurer of the Egba division of the party in 1956.
However, Ransome-Kuti was often in conflict with Azikiwe and the rest of the
party leadership because she felt women were not as well-represented as men.
She was eventually expelled from the party when she failed to win a federal
parliamentary seat in the 1959 elections. After her expulsion, her political
voice was diminished due to the direction of national politics, as both of the
more powerful members of the opposition, Awolowo and Adegbenro, had support
close by.
However, she never truly ended her activism. Prior to independence, She
and Elizabeth Adekogbe provided
dynamic leadership for women's rights in the '50s. she founded the Commoners
Peoples Party (CPP) in an attempt to challenge the ruling NCNC, ultimately
denying them victory in her area: her party earned 4,665 votes to NCNC's 9,755,
thus allowing the opposition Action Group
(which had 10,443 votes) to win. She was one of the delegates that negotiated
Nigeria's independence with the British government.
Funmi-Kuti
was radicalized through the actions of the British occupation of Nigeria:
its racism, sexism and economic violence. She organized literacy classes for
women in the 1920s and founded a nursery school in the 1930s. In 1942, she
founded the Abeokuta Ladies' Club (ALC) for educated women involved in
charitable work. She also started the Social Welfare for Market Women club to
help educate working-class women (the first adult education program for women
in Nigeria). Along with Eniola Soyinka (her sister-in-law and the mother of
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka), she merged the ALC and the market women’s club
to form the Egba or Abeokuta Women's Union, which had a membership of over
20,000 individuals.. The core objective of the organisation was fighting
against the arbitrary exercise of colonial power by the British-supported
puppet king of Egbaland, the imposition of taxes on women without granting them
the right to vote and the attempt by the British to control markets run by
women (trading was one of the major occupations of women in Western Nigeria of
the time).
She also held a
seat in the Western House of Chiefs of Nigeria as an oloye of the Yoruba
people.
Traditionally, Yoruba society was divided into male and female
administrative sections. Although men in Nigeria held the position of clan
chiefs, women had traditionally held political authority which was shared with
men, particularly concentrated in areas of trade. With the coming of formal
colonial rule through the Berlin Conference of 1884, the British authorities
occupying Nigeria restructured the governance of the society: establishing the
position of “Warrant Chiefs” as middle men to act between the traditional
authorities and those of the colonizers, elevating the traditional and largely
symbolic position of clan chief to a political power broker and created the
Sole Native Authority, to which only the men holding local political power were
admitted.
In 1918, a colonial
tax on palm oil to be paid by all men in Nigeria had caused major uprisings; in
1929 the British extended taxation to women and also goats which were usually
the personal possessions of women. As soon as the rumours of such a taxation
were confirmed, the women of Nigeria rose up. After an initial incident where a
Warrant Chief had attacked a female householder and thousands of local women
had encircled his home, singing songs, attacking the house before insisting on
his resignation and dragging him to the courthouse to be tried for assault,
huge gatherings of women appeared across Nigeria protesting at Warrant Chief’s
offices, burning courts and European owned shops demanding an end to the tax.
By the late 1940s,
the burden of taxation was becoming unbearable as the colonial authorities
squeezed more and more from its protectorates in the aftermath of the Second
European War.
In 1949, she led a
protest against the native authorities, in particular the Alake of Egbaland,
Oba Ademola II. She presented documents alleging abuse of authority by the
Alake who had been granted the right to collect the taxes by the British colonial
government. Through a series of marches involving tens of thousands of women, a
refusal to pay taxes, strikes and a wide spectrum of measures of civilian
disobedience. The British colonizers teamed up with their local lackeys to
subdue the women. At one protest, the “ORO” stick was brought out – a symbolic
artifact of the secretive male cult of the Ogboni – supposedly imbibed with
great powers, and the women were instructed to go home before evil spirits
overcame them . When the women shrank back in fear, Ransome-Kuti grabbed the
stick, waved it around declaring that the women now had the power before taking
it with her displaying it prominently in her home. This action gave her a
reputation of fearlessness and courage that led 50, 000 women to follow her to
the home of Alake of Egbaland (Alake
Ademola), the “pseudo-king” of Western Nigeria and a colonial stooge. As
the women protested outside the king’s house, they sang in Yoruba:
“Alake, for a long time you have used your
manhood as a mark of authority that you are our husband. Today we shall reverse
the order and use our vagina to play the role of husband.”
With this unified action and song they chased him out of the house, condemning
him to exile on threat of castration This actions resulted in the king’s
abdication. These protests (which caused a sensation across the nation and
internationally) are often referred to historically as the 'Egba Women's War'
or the 'Nigerian Women's Struggle'.
Ransome-Kuti’s
political activism led to her being called the doyen of female rights in
Nigeria as well as 'The Mother of Africa'. She also oversaw the successful
abolition of separate tax rates for women.
In 1953, the Egba Women’s Union became the Federation of Nigerian Women
Societies, which subsequently formed an alliance with the Women's
International Democratic Federation (of which Ransome-Kuti
was made World Vice-President in the same year).
In 1955 the Rev
Ransome-Kuti died of cancer. The next 30 years saw Funmilayo Kuti
struggle to build and run a series of schools with and without support from
local and national government. She also became involved with a series of
land litigations which cost her and her children dearly and none of which she
was able to win. One of the family properties that became the center of
controversy and probably the most infamous sites in Lagos was that which was
located at 14 Agege Motor Road. The property had been occupied by FRK’s
musician son, FELA. FELA’s music and lyrics were highly critical of
Nigerian governments. Fela was a champion of traditional African culture
and like his mother a Pan-Africanist. 14 Agege Motor Road had become a
commune which Fela called Kalakuta Republic .
During the Cold War and before the independence of her country, Funmilayo Kuti
travelled widely owing to her status as the world vice-president of the Women’s
International Democratic Federation, angering the Nigerian as well as British
and American governments by establishing contacts within the Eastern Bloc
during visits to the USSR, Hungary and China (where she met Mao Zedong, the
founding father of the People's Republic of China). In 1956, her passport was
not renewed as it was feared that she could influence other women with her
allegedly communist ideas and policies. She was also refused a US visa by the
American government on the same grounds
Ransome-Kuti
was the first Nigerian women to drive a car and ride a motorcycle. She was
Nigeria's first ever representative at a women's international conference (in
the USSR in 1963). She was one of the founders of the Nigeria Union of Teachers
and the Nigerian Students Union. The University of Ibadan awarded her an honorary doctorate in law
in 1968 and in 1970 she was declared the winner of the Lenin Peace
Prize.
•
One of the women elected to the native House of Chiefs, serving as an Oloye of
the Yoruba people
•
Ranking member of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons
•
Treasurer and President Western Women Association of the National Council of
Nigeria and the Cameroons
•
Leader of Abeokuta Women's Union
•
Leader of Commoners Peoples Party
•
Leader of Nigeria Women's Union
In old
age, her activism was overshadowed by that of her three sons who provided
effective opposition to various military regimes. In 1978, she was assassinated
by the Nigerian Authorities at the Kalakuta Republic – a commune established by
her son Fela, after it was raided by over a thousand Nigerian soldiers acting
under orders from General Obasanjo. Kalakuta was often raided by the
police and armed forces as was his club “the Shrine”. Obasanjo was angered by
Fela’s criticism of the military as “zombies” who intimidated ordinary
Nigerians while allowing the corruption and exploitation of communities to go
unchecked. On February 18th 1977 Kalakuta Republic was surrounded by a
thousand armed soldiers (The present president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo
was then Supreme Commander of the military dictatorship of the day). That
day, FRK together with Fela’s brother Bekolari, Fela’s many wives and Fela
himself. This raid was a particularly brutal one. The soldiers
armed with bayonets and clubs stormed the compound without any warning and
began to beat people, destroy property and strip women naked.
In 1978 she was
assassinated by the Nigerian Authorities at the Kalakuta Republic – a commune
established by her son Fela, after it was raided by over a thousand Nigerian
soldiers acting under orders from General Obasanjo. Kalakuta was often
raided by the police and armed forces as was his club “the Shrine”. Obasanjo
was angered by Fela’s criticism of the military as “zombies” who intimidated
ordinary Nigerians while allowing the corruption and exploitation of
communities to go unchecked. On February 18th 1977 Kalakuta Republic was
surrounded by a thousand armed soldiers (The present president of Nigeria,
Olusegun Obasanjo was then Supreme Commander of the military dictatorship of
the day). That day, FRK together with Fela’s brother Bekolari, Fela’s
many wives and Fela himself. This raid was a particularly brutal one.
The soldiers armed with bayonets and clubs stormed the compound without
any warning and began to beat people, destroy property and strip women naked.
Her coffin was sent
to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos, General Olusegun Obasanjo’s residence together
with a newly written song “Coffin for a Head of State”.
She lapsed into a
coma in February of that year and died on April 13 in Lagos as a result of injuries sustained during the assault.
She was buried in Abeokuta on May 5, 1978.
The thoughts of everyone at Manchester United are with the Glazer family tonight following the news that Malcolm Glazer has passed away. He was 85.
