For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria
Date
1997
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ikoyi, Lagos(P.O. Box 54664): Crucible Publishers Ltd.,
Abstract
Historical Background; “We Two Form a Multitude": The Ancestors; “When Love Whispers”: Early Marriage and Family Life; “Lioness of Lisabi”: The Fall of a Ruler; “A True Citizen”: The National Arena; “For Their Freedoms": The International Sphere; “Virtue Is Better than Wealth": Death and Legacy.
Description
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (nee Thomas) was a first-born daughter and the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School. Hence she acquired the affectionate nickname Beere, which means “first-born daughter” in the Yoruba language. Beere also became the nom de guerre of this first Nigerian woman to head a movement to attempt to depose a king, to travel with a nationalist delegation to London, and to hold office in an international women’s organization.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (nee Thomas) was born in 1900 in Abeokuta, a formerly autonomous kingdom that, by the time of her birth, lay within the British-ruled colonial protectorate of Southern Nigeria. She died in 1978 in the same city, then the capital of Ogun State in the independent Federal Republic of Nigeria. Her life encapsulates much of the twentieth-century history of Nigeria while the record of her ancestry depicts the evolution of Abeokuta in the nineteenth century. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was deeply attached to her hometown, where she spent the major part of her life, and concern for its progress, as she visualized it, was the initial motivation for her entry into public life. Even later when she was a participant in national and international politics and the acknowledged leader of women throughout Nigeria, Abeokuta remained her springboard and her inspiration.