Biography of mrs olufunmilayo ransome kuti

Nigerian activist (1900–1978)

ChiefFunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, MON (; born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Olufela Folorunso Thomas; 25 October 1900 – 13 April 1978), also known as Funmilayo Aníkúlápó-Kuti, was a Nigerianeducator, political campaigner, suffragist, and women's rights activist.

Fumilayo Ransome Kuti was born in Abeokuta, in what is now in Ogun State, and was the first female student to attend the Abeokuta Grammar School. As a young adult, she worked as a teacher, organizing some of the first preschool classes in the country and arranging literacy classes for lower-income women.

During the 1940s, Ransome-Kuti established the Abeokuta Women’s Union and advocated for women’s rights, demanding better representation of women in local governing bodies and an end to unfair taxes on market women. Described by media as the "Lioness of Lisabi", she led marches and protests of up to 10,000 women, forcing the ruling Alake to temporarily abdicate in 1949. As Ransome-Kuti’s political influence grew, she took part in the Nigerian independence movement, attending conferences and joining overseas delegations to discuss proposed national constitutions. Spearheading the creation of the Nigerian Women’s Union and the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies, she advocated for Nigerian women’s right to vote and became a noted member of international peace and women's rights movements.

Ransome-Kuti received the Lenin Peace Prize and was awarded membership in the Order of the Niger for her work. In her later years, she supported her sons' criticism of Nigeria's military governments. She died at the age of 77 after being wounded in a military raid on family property. Ransome-Kuti's children included the musician Fela Kuti (born Olufela Ransome-Kuti), doctor and activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, and health ministerOlikoye Ransome-Kuti.

Early life and education

Frances Abigail Olu

By the end of World War II, the Nigerian economy was on its knees. The economic burdens that had plagued the lives of average Nigerians during the interwar period had only worsened with the war’s economic restrictions, high inflation and acute shortages. In Abeokuta, a town established in 1830 by the Yoruba ethnic group and now the capital city of Ogun state in southwest Nigeria, women who were involved in the local markets and in the selling of foodstuffs were particularly hard hit — and not for the first time. But this time the women would have a champion to fight their cause: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Her approach not only fueled the fight against colonialism and the patriarchy, it also inspired many other social justice movements in Nigeria, throughout Africa and around the world.

When British colonial officials first imposed taxes in Abeokuta in 1918, women were targeted unfairly. Not only were they taxed separately from men and at an earlier age (girls paid taxes from the age of 15 while boys didn’t till they were 16), the methods through which the tax was collected by the local law enforcement were violent and excessive. Their homes were invaded and they were physically assaulted, sometimes even stripped naked in order to determine their ages for taxation. Market women were subjected to police seizures of their produce without compensation or at rates lower than those set up by the colonial administration.

Despite receiving sympathy from some of the men and other male-led institutions, the women of Abeokuta continued to suffer. Yet the local administration would not budge. The market women of Abeokuta had time and time again brought their grievances to the local traditional ruler, the alake of Egbaland, Ademola II, and the Egba Council, with no result. There had to be another way for their complaints to be heard and understood.

This is where the story of Ransome-Kuti’s rise as a champion of women

Educator, political campaigner, and women’s rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Olufela Folorunso Thomas on October 25, 1900, in Abeokuta, Nigeria, to prominent farmer Chief Daniel Olumeyuwa Thomas and dressmaker Lucretia Phyllis Omoyeni Adeosolu.

Ransome-Kuti was one of only six girls admitted to Abeokuta Grammar School in 1914. Her education there was the springboard to an all-girls finishing school in England. It is there, in the 1920s, that she discovered socialism and anti-colonialism and strengthened her ties to her people. After graduation, she returned to Abeokuta, where she became an educator.

At 25, she married Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a school principal and community activist. The couple were married for 30 years and had four children, including international music superstar Fela Ransome-Kuti.

Marriage forced Ransome-Kuti out of teaching but left her to pursue her passion for politics. In 1928, she started a self-improvement group for young women. After she and her husband purchased a car in 1936, she became the first woman in her town of Abeokuta to drive.

In 1944, Ransome-Kuti founded the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club, which later evolved into the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU), a move that illustrated her commitment to women’s political, social, and economic rights. Five years later, in 1949, she earned the moniker The Lioness of Lisabi after leading the women of Egba in a riot to take on both the British colonial administration and the traditional ruler, the monarch of Egba, Oba Ademola II. She and her followers challenged both over price controls and taxation after decades of gender discrimination. Tax policies began in 1918 and required girls as young as 15 to pay 3 shillings a year as an income tax. Men did not have to pay the tax until 18. Government agents often raided the girl’s homes, stripping them naked to ascertain their age in order to tax them. Agents worked on commission, and ext

On February 18, 1977, approximately 1,000 soldiers stormed a compound in Lagos. It belonged to the famed Afrobeat musician and critic of Nigeria’s military government, Fela Kuti.

During the raid, Kuti’s 76-year-old mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was thrown from a second-storey window. She sustained injuries from which she never recovered and died at the General Hospital in Lagos on April 13, 1978.

At least two Nigerian news outlets reported her death with the headline: “Fela’s Mum is Dead.”

But Ransome-Kuti was not just “Fela’s mum”. The anti-colonial activist and feminist was, in many ways, the mother of the nation.

‘No taxation without representation’

Venerable Victor Sotunde, now 88 and a retired priest from the Anglican Communion of Abeokuta in western Nigeria, remembers Ransome-Kuti from his days as a young boarding student at Abeokuta Grammar School. Her husband, Reverand Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was the school’s principal and the couple lived on the premises with their children.

“During morning devotion at school assembly, we saw her come downstairs with her towel always over her left shoulder, walk past us to go to the bathroom,” he recalled. “We could tell her husband, our principal, didn’t like it because it was also during his inspection of students.

“She was well-known to us youngsters, as the leader of the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU),” Sotunde explained. “Due to her activism, she was given the traditional title of “Beere”, which is usually bestowed on female leaders, and translates as ‘first of equals’.”

Under British colonial indirect rule, Nigeria had been divided into 24 provinces. For administrative reasons, each province comprised divisions and districts. Abeokuta province in southern Nigeria had two divisions – Egba and Egbado, which were divided into smaller districts. Each division and district was administered by a Sole Native Authority (SN