Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas; born October 25, 1900 in Abeokuta , † April 13, 1978 in Lagos ) was a Nigerian politician , teacher , suffragette and African feminist .
The way into politics
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was born in 1900 in Abeokuta, which at that time belonged to the Kingdom of Egba , which was dependent on Great Britain . From the 1860s onwards, Great Britain took more initiatives to colonize what would later become known as Nigeria . Egba was one of the numerous Yoruba monarchies which directly adjoined the Lagos colony and which the British on the one hand protected against powerful enemies and on the other hand increasingly patronized. In accordance with the colonial doctrine of indirect rule , Great Britain left the Alake , the king and his subordinate councilors in his post even after the official establishment of colonial status in 1914. This was subject to the condition that he made himself the executor of the instructions of the British governor and his district officers.
Funmilayo's parents were both teachers and thus belonged to the middle class. They had had a Western upbringing, were fluent in English and were Christianized by the third generation . Nevertheless, they were determined Egba patriots and opposed the colonial power, at least indirectly, with a cultural nationalistic habitus. The young Funmilayo sympathized with Iyalode Madam Tinubu († 1887), the woman leader known as the “Lioness of Lisabi”, who once powerfully defended Egba's independence. But the British, who otherwise left the old potentates in their offices, had increasingly pushed back the traditionally strong political influence of women. The office of Iyalode was eventually abolished.
The Ransome-Kuti life was not initially politically influenced. After training at the Abeokuta Girls Grammar School, her parents sent her parents to study in Manchester in 1919 , from where she returned in 1923 to teach at her old school. There she acquired the name "Béère", which means "firstborn daughter", because she was the first woman to teach at this school. In 1925 she married the teacher and theologian Reverend IO Ransome-Kuti , who soon became director of the Abeokuta Grammar School. Reverend Ransome-Kuti later made a name for himself as the founder of the Nigerian Union of Teachers and the Nigerian Union of Students , two organizations that advocated Nigeria's political independence and supra-ethnic unity. When Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti founded the later Abeokuta Ladies Club towards the end of the twenties , she was pursuing politically unsuspicious goals, such as manual labor and cultural education for women from Abeokuta's upper class. In the 1930s, with the help of her club, Kuti began organizing large-scale literacy courses for rural women. These courses soon acquired a regional reputation, not least thanks to Ransome-Kuti's original teaching methods. As a result, the Ladies Club was also confronted with the oppressive economic burdens of lower-class women and the numerous humiliations and arbitrary acts against them on the part of the Egbe government. Ransome-Kuti began publishing protest notes and articles accusing Alake Ademola II of Egba of abuse of office and corruption. The situation was exacerbated after the British government tried to squeeze more money out of Nigeria from 1939 as a result of the war economy and the Egba government tried to enforce this, especially at the expense of women. In contrast, the Abeokuta Ladies Club organized mass demonstrations in which tens of thousands of women took part and which put the Alake in dire straits. In 1946 the Abeokuta Ladies Club was renamed the Abeokuta Women's Union , the permanent agitation of which in 1949 led to the Alake resigning from all offices. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, on the other hand, was accepted as a council member in the Egba government and worked from now on to improve the situation of Nigeria's women on the one hand and Nigeria's separation from Great Britain on the other.
The struggle for the emancipation of Nigeria and its women
Ransome-Kuti's first supraregional activities led to the founding of the Nigerian Women's Union (NWU) in 1949, which had set itself the goal of democratic participation in Nigeria, the right to vote for women and the proportional representation of women in local councils. The NWU emerged from the union of the Abeokuta Women's Union, the Aba Market Women's Association under the leadership of Margaret Ekpo and the Enugu Women's Association under Janet Okala , women's organizations from the south and southeast of the country. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti chaired the meeting, while the charismatic Margaret Ekpo was elected General Secretary. Great Britain had convened a national conference for Nigeria from 1950, which had democratic reforms and partial autonomy of the colony as the goal and to which several traditional representatives were invited. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was the only woman to take part in the conference that was to lead to the so-called Macpherson Constitution in 1951 , which provided for the political division of Nigeria into three regional parliaments. However, since she saw women as disadvantaged in the new constitution, she initiated the establishment of the Federation of Nigerian Women's Societies in 1953 , which she described as an anti-parliament of women. The FNWS demanded to be informed about every legislative resolution and to be asked for approval. On the other hand, men's politics tried to weaken the FNWS from the start. The organization suffered a severe blow from the resignation of Margaret Ekpo, who at the same time announced that the previously inviolable gender solidarity of women in Nigeria would withdraw in favor of particular interests. Ransome-Kuti had always considered it necessary to be involved in men's politics at the same time and had therefore joined the NCNC , the party of the later first President of Nigeria Nnamdi Azikiwe , in which she, in constant conflict with the party leadership, led the women's wing. After Azikiwe had prevented her nomination as a candidate for the regional elections several times, she ran as an independent candidate in the elections in Central Egba in 1959 and received 17.6% of the vote.
After independence
After Nigeria's independence in 1960, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti withdrew more and more from active politics and devoted himself to the establishment of educational institutions for women. She maintained numerous international contacts, above all with women's organizations in China and the Soviet Union and with anti-colonialist politicians from the third world. B. the first President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah . Because of such contacts, her passport was withdrawn several times during the colonial years. At the beginning of the seventies she withdrew to the artist commune Kalakuta Republic in Lagos, which was founded on the private property of her son Fela Kuti , and was seriously injured when it was forcibly dissolved by the military government in 1977. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who also called herself Funmilayo Anikalupo-Kuti on the initiative of her son in the last years of her life, died of the sequelae of her injuries on April 13, 1978. Numerous obituaries honored her as the “mother of the nation”. Her son Fela immortalized her memory on the album Unknown Soldier (alluding to the unknown soldier who threw her from the third floor of her apartment when the Kalakuta Republic was evacuated).
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti received several honorary doctorates and was honored by membership in the Order of the Niger in 1965 .
Important events
- 1946 Foundation of the Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU)
- 1949 Resignation of Alake Ademola II from Egba
- 1949 Founding of the Nigerian Women's Union (NWU)
- from 1950 National conference on the reform of the Nigerian constitution
- 1951 First regional elections in Nigeria
- 1953 Foundation of the Federation of Nigerian Women's Societies (FNWS)
- 1954 Macpherson Constitution
- 1959 Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti as an independent candidate in the city parliament of Abeokuta
- 1960 Nigeria becomes independent
- 1967–1970 Biafra War Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti participated in mediation talks in the Congo.
- 1977 Evacuation of the Kalakuta Republic
children
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti had a daughter and three sons.
- Dolupo Ransome-Kuti (1926-2006)
- Olikoye Ransome-Kuti (1927–2003), doctor and Minister of Health of Nigeria from 1985 to 1992.
- Olufela Ransome-Kuti, or Fela Kuti (1938–1997), international musician and politician
- Bekololari Ransome-Kuti (1940–2006), doctor, between 1989 and 1998 leader of the democracy movement against military rule in Nigeria
Quote
“The best you can give your enemies - forgiveness / tolerance to your adversaries / a friend your heart / your mother - do what will make them proud of you / set a good example for your child / respect for yourself / and goodness to all people "
literature
- Cheryl Johnson and Nina Emma Mba: For Women and the Nation . University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill. 1997, ISBN 0-252-02313-7 .
- Ransome-Kuti, Funmilayo , in: June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International encyclopedia of women's suffrage . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , pp. 251f.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ransome-Kuti, Funmilayo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ransome-Kuti, Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo; Anikalupo-Kuti, Funmilayo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Nigerian politician and feminist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 25, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Abeokuta |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 1978 |
| Place of death | Lagos |