From Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti to Gambo Sawaba, these five Nigerian women challenged colonial rule and fought for political rights before and after independence. Their contributions, often overshadowed by male nationalists, are essential to understanding Nigeria's journey to independence on October 1, 1960.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti turned market women into a political force
Before she became known internationally as the mother of Fela Kuti, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was already a formidable political organiser. In Abeokuta, she helped transform women's complaints about taxation and colonial administration into a mass political movement. Her Abeokuta Women's Union grew to about 20,000 members.
The women protested taxation, demanded better treatment and challenged the system that excluded them from decisions affecting their lives. In 1947, thousands of women marched towards the palace of the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Ademola II. They occupied the palace grounds and continued their protests through repeated demonstrations while markets were shut. The union explicitly connected women's political rights with the wider struggle for Nigerian independence. Ransome-Kuti later helped build a national women's movement that pressed for women's representation, education and voting rights.
Margaret Ekpo went from attending meetings for her husband to making history herself
Margaret Ekpo's route into politics began almost accidentally. Her husband, a medical doctor working for the government, could not attend political meetings, so Ekpo sometimes went in his place; she, however, did not remain a spectator for long. Ekpo became an important nationalist and women's rights activist in eastern Nigeria.
She organised women, challenged colonial policies and became involved in constitutional conferences in Lagos and London that helped determine Nigeria's route towards independence. In 1954, she formed the Aba Township Women's Association, while her political career eventually took her into the Eastern Region parliament, where she served from 1961 to 1965.
Gambo Sawaba was imprisoned again and again for refusing to stay quiet
If there is one detail about Gambo Sawaba that should make Nigerians stop scrolling, it is the fact that she was imprisoned 16 times for her activism. Sawaba became politically active in northern Nigeria as a teenager. Through the Northern Elements Progressive Union, she campaigned against child marriage and forced labour and advocated education and greater political participation for women.
She was operating in an environment where political and social restrictions made her activism particularly difficult. Yet she kept going.
Tanimowo Ogunlesi did something almost unimaginable for a Nigerian woman at the time
Not every battle for independence was fought in the streets. Some were fought in classrooms, political meetings and constitutional negotiations. Tanimowo Ogunlesi was an educationist and women's rights activist whose work connected education with the broader struggle for Nigerian self-determination. She founded the Children's Home School in Ibadan in 1948 and became involved in women's organisations and nationalist politics.
Then, in 1953, she travelled to Britain as the only woman in a Nigerian delegation involved in constitutional discussions about the country's future. Ogunlesi later became president of the National Council of Women's Societies in 1959, just one year before independence.
Wuraola Esan carried the struggle into independent Nigeria
And then Nigeria finally became independent, the flag changed and the British colonial administration was replaced by Nigerian political institutions. But one question remained: What would independence mean for Nigerian women? Wuraola Esan became the first woman to serve in Nigeria's Senate after independence.
Born in 1909, Esan was an educator and women's rights activist who had already worked to expand opportunities for girls before entering national politics. Her political career gave women a voice inside the institutions of the new Nigerian state. In Senate debates, she raised issues affecting women, including the political exclusion of women in Northern Nigeria and the economic importance of women petty traders. She must be included because for many Nigerian women, October 1, 1960, was not the end of the struggle but the beginning of another one: the struggle to make sure independence actually included them.
There is a temptation to tell Nigeria's independence story as if a handful of famous men negotiated with Britain, and, on October 1, 1960, they simply offered freedom on a golden platter. It did not. Independence was built through decades of organising, protests, political campaigns, constitutional negotiations, education and resistance. And women were part of that process. Ransome-Kuti mobilised thousands of women in Abeokuta. Ekpo became a powerful political voice in the East. Sawaba challenged social and political restrictions in the North despite repeated imprisonment. Ogunlesi entered constitutional discussions about Nigeria's future. Esan took women's concerns into the legislature of the newly independent country.
