Know
more about your history and the great people who helped shape it. This
is the story of Fela's mother...a woman whose story needs to be told
over and over again. Read below...
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
