Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas was born on 25 October 1900, in Abeokuta. She attended the Abeokuta Grammar school for secondary education, and later went to England for further studies. She soon returned to Nigeria and became a teacher. 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 Nigerian Union of Teachers and of the Nigerian Union of Students.
Ransome-Kuti 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. She also held a seat in the
Western House of Chiefs of Nigeria as an oloye of the Yoruba people.
Aside the fact that she is the first woman to ride a
bicycle and then the first woman to drive a car in West Africa,
Throughout her career, she was known as an educator and activist. She
and Elizabeth Adekogbe provided dynamic leadership for women's rights in
the '50s. She founded an organization for women in Abeokuta, with a
membership tally of over 20 000 individuals spanning both literate and
illiterate women.
Ransome-Kuti launched the organization into public
consciousness when she rallied women against price controls which were
hurting the female merchants of the Abeokuta markets. Trading was one of
the major occupations of women in the Western Nigeria of the time. In
1949, she led a protest against Native Authorities, especially against
the Alake of Egbaland. She presented documents alleging abuse of
authority by the Alake, who had been granted the right to collect the
taxes by his colonial suzerain, the Government of the United Kingdom. He
subsequently relinquished his crown for a time due to the affair. She
also oversaw the successful abolishing of separate tax rates for women.
In 1953, she founded the Federation of Nigerian Women Societies which
subsequently formed an alliance with the Women's International
Democratic Federation.
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti campaigned for women's votes' She
was for many years a member of the ruling National Council of Nigeria
and the Cameroon party, but was later expelled when she was not elected
to a federal parliamentary seat. At the NCNC, she was the treasurer and
subsequent president of the Western NCNC women's Association. After her
suspension 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. In the 1950s, she was one of the few
women elected to the house of chiefs. At the time, this was one of her
homeland's most influential bodies.
She founded the Egba or Abeokuta Women's Union along with
Eniola Soyinka (her sister-in-law and the mother of the
Noble Laureate Wole Soyinka). This organisation is said to have once had
a membership of 20,000 women. Among other things, Fumilayo Ransom Kuti
organised workshops for illiterate market women. She continued to
campaign against taxes and price controls.
During the Cold War and before the independence of her
country, Funmilayo Kuti travelled widely and angered the Nigerian as
well as British and American Government by her contacts with the Eastern
Bloc. This included her travel to the former USSR, Hungary and
China where she met Mao Zedong. In 1956, her passport was not renewed by
the government because it was said that "it can be assumed that it is
her intention to influence … women with communist ideas and policies."
She was also refused a U.S. visa because the American government alleged
that she was a communist.
Prior to independence she founded the Commoners Peoples
Party in an attempt to challenge the ruling NCNC, ultimately denying
them victory in her area. She got 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.
In old age her activism was over-shadowed by that of her
three sons, who provided effective opposition to various Nigerian
military juntas. In 1978 Funmilayo was thrown from a third-floor
window,from her son Fela's compound, a commune known as the Kalakuta
Republic, was stormed by one thousand armed military personnel. She
lapsed into a coma in February of that year, and died on 13 April 1978,
as a result of her injuries.
Kuti was the mother of the activists Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a
musician, Beko Ransome-Kuti, a doctor, and Professor Olikoye
Ransome-Kuti, a doctor and a former health minister of Nigeria. She was
also grandmother to musicians Seun Kuti and Femi Kuti
Credits:
- Margaret Strobel, "Women agitating internationally for change". Journal of Women's History. Baltimore: Summer 2001. Vol.13, Issue 2; p. 190, 12 pp.
- Johnson-Odim, Cheryl; Mba, Emma (1997). For women and the nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06613-8.
- Joyce M Chadya, "MOTHER POLITICS: Anti-colonial Nationalism and the Woman Question in Africa".Journal of Women's History. Autumn 2003. Vol.15, Issue 3; p. 153.
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