5 Nigerian women whose sacrifices deserve a place in every Independence Day lesson

• Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti mobilised thousands of women against colonial taxation and political exclusion.

• Margaret Ekpo and Gambo Sawaba fought for women's political rights from opposite ends of colonial Nigeria.

• Nigeria's independence story did not end with October 1, 1960; women continued fighting for representation in the new country.

Think back to the photographs usually shown every October 1. You’d find that they mostly show men in native attire and suits, probably in front of a crowd, with the Nigerian flag, British officials and the Union Jack coming down as a new nation's flag rises for the first time.

Long before the Union Jack was lowered, Nigerian men and women were already challenging colonial authority, demanding representation and arguing over what kind of country should arise when British rule ended.

Yet when the story is retold every Independence Day, the women who helped shape that journey can easily disappear behind the better-known names of Nigeria’s male nationalists.

Now apply some creative freedom and imagine that photograph with these women who helped fight for that moment standing beside them.

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'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. 

She also became one of the women who turned political organising into a mass movement.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.