Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900–1978) was a leading activist during Nigerian women’s anti-colonial struggles. She founded the Abeokuta Women’s Union, one of the most impressive women’s organizations of the twentieth century (with a membership estimated to have reached up to 20,000 women), which fought to protect and further the rights of women.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900–1978) was born in Abeokuta, present-day Ogun State, Nigeria. She was one of the first women to attend Abeokuta Grammar School in 1914, where she would go on to teach.
In 1919 she left for Wincham Hall School for Girls, Cheshire, England, to pursue her studies. By the time of her return to Nigeria in 1922, no doubt in reaction to the racism she had encountered in Britain, she had dropped her English name, (Frances Abigail).
She soon became associated with some of the most important anti-colonial educational movements in Nigeria and West Africa and fought tirelessly to further women’s access to education and political representation.
Her children Beko, Olikoye, and Fela, would all go on to play important roles in education, healthcare, the arts, and political activism.
In 1932, when her husband became principal of the Abeokuta school, she helped organize the Abeokuta Ladies Club (ALC), initially a civic and charitable group of mostly Western-educated Christian women. The organization gradually became more political and feminist in its orientation, and in 1944 it formally admitted market women (women vendors in Abeokuta’s open-air markets), who were generally impoverished, illiterate, and exploited by colonial authorities. In 1946 the ALC changed its name to the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU) and opened its membership to all women in Abeokuta. Ransome-Kuti became the first president of the AWU (1946) and headed its successor organizations until her death. Under her leadership the AWU became a national organization, renaming itself the Nigerian Women’s Union (NWU) in 1949 and the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS) in 1953.
The AWU initially campaigned against price controls, which drastically limited the incomes of market women, and for fair treatment of market women by the government. It also protested a special tax on women imposed by the local ruler, Sir Ladapo Ademola II. From 1947 the organization led large demonstrations against Ademola’s government, which led to his temporary abdication in 1949. The broader goals of the AWU included greater educational opportunities for women and girls, the enforcement of sanitary regulations, and the provision of health care and other social services for women. Ransome-Kuti pursued these initiatives with the intention of raising living standards for women and ultimately eliminating the causes of poverty.
Ransome-Kuti served several terms on the local council of Abeokuta between 1949 and 1960. In 1951 she ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the regional assembly as the candidate of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which she had helped found in 1944. In 1953 the FNWS became affiliated with the Women’s International Democratic Federation, and Ransome-Kuti was elected a vice president of the organization. She subsequently lectured in several countries on the conditions of Nigerian women. After the NCNC rejected her bid for a second candidacy for the assembly in 1959, she ran as an independent, which split the NCNC vote and ensured the opposing party’s victory. She was subsequently expelled from the NCNC and formed her own party, the Commoners’ People’s Party, which was disbanded one year later. By this time her political influence in Nigeria and her following among women in Abeokuta had declined significantly.
