How Women Helped Forge Modern Nigeria

Calvin Stevens
Feb 15
9 min read

What role did women play in 20th century Nigeria, and how is the patriarchy treating them today?

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60th Anniversary re-enactment of Women’s Protest during the Women’s War of 1929, Aba. Taken from Black Past, courtesy of National Museum Uyo, Fair use image.

O n a reread of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, I came across a powerful passage that reminded me of one of my research projects I undertook in the previous year:

“The white man is very clever… he has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart”.[1]

This quote, quite perfectly, encapsulates an important aspect of Nigeria’s colonial past — with the book taking place in a similar setting, this is no surprise. But Things Fall Apart only deals with the masculine in this regard, for the narrative is centred on Okonkwo, an Igbo man; the tale of the Igbo woman, on the other hand, is largely ignored.

And the perpetuation of Nigerian history, even today, continues in much the same manner. Modern Nigeria is often categorised by its strong, patriarchal nature, and the making of the country, the breaking of its colonial chains, is attributed almost exclusively to men.

Yet when we look at history — when we really dig deep — we find that this claim is not entirely true.

Prior to formal colonisation

Before the 1884 Berlin Conference and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, Igbo society, which was predominantly situated in modern-day Nigeria’s southeastern provinces, was politically characterised by it’s dual-sex system wherein both women and men wielded political power in relation to one another.

Gender and sex were, to say the least, rather more fluid, dynamic, and ultimately less structured than in Western society. Ifi Adiume makes a good case for this in Male daughters, female Husbands by showing the dual nature of so-called “gender roles” that perpetuated out from the domestic sphere and unto the national sphere.

The very gender-less characteristics of many West-African languages also speaks volumes to this notion.

But this traditional system of authority and domestic affairs was fully uprooted by 1914 with the formal conquest of Nigeria by the British Empire.

The indirect rule implemented by the British — which piggybacked off a warrant chief system — embedded the local provinces of Owerri and Calabar with a more patriarchal rule of law. Rule Number 9 of the 1900 Native Courts Proclamation was, perhaps, the first law of such nature that laid its grievances specifically amongst the local Igbo women.

The proclamation essentially ruled that all power was to be handed over to the warrant chiefs, and this included all economic activities. The afia (marketplace) was a large hub strictly run by women who also frequently used it to hold mikiri (private, women-only gatherings) [2]; and the subsequent undermining of their exclusivity in this role was the beginning of a long line of protests.

A British cartographer’s map of Nigeria (including it’s Northern, Western, and Eastern territories), 1914. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Early days

The earliest mass demonstration by Igbo women, hence, was recorded in 1916 in opposition to their disempowerment from the afia.

Following this, in 1925, there was the Nwaobiala Movement — nwaobiala referring to multi-disciplinary artists who, particularly through performance art and dance, parodied certain aspects of society as a form of social commentary[3] — which advanced a critique of local male elites who, amidst their co-operation with the colonial administration, were failing to preserve the traditional Igbo social hierarchy.

The Women’s War

In 1927, an incident occurred where the warrant chief of Oloko tried to extract a poll tax from the local women. Unfortunately for him, his first victim was a young woman by the name Nwanyeruwa who not only stopped the collection before it had even started but also resisted assault thereof.

This sparked the immediate formation of the Ohandum, a group of very passionate, very outspoken, and very militant women.

Riots soon broke out across southeastern Nigeria until, by 1929, a full-scale war was being waged against the warrant chiefs and the British administration in the city of Aba. Mass protests were coordinated by the Ohandum through the remnants of the mikiri network, and the colonial offices in Bende were attacked, forcing the administration to eventually cave by the year’s end.

This period became known in the colonial lexicon as “The Women’s War” but is more locally remembered as the Ogu Umunwaanyi, or simply Ogu.

For a more in-depth article about the Women's War, feel free to check out the following article:

The Aba Women’s War

Thanks to these women, we do not pay tax to any British monarch who has no jurisdiction on our God-given corner of this…

medium.com

The Ogu was not, however, without a cost.

Many women were harassed during their march on Bende and Aba and, during one incident in particular, two women were killed by car amidst a road protest.[3a] Subsequently, in the town of Utu Etim Ekpo, British troops fired upon another Ohandum crowd, killing 18 and wounding a further 19 women.[3b]

All the casualties of the Ogu, save one Nigerian man, were women — a table produced by researcher Misty L. Bastian in Women in African Colonial Histories details the list of some 52 women whose deaths were recorded.

Thus, the overall weight of the Ohandum’s success was counteracted, and possibly tipped, by the weight of their losses. After all, although their demands were heard, the convicted warrant chiefs were only sentenced to a meagre two years in prison and, furthermore, changes to the afia as well as a reformation or abolishment of the chief warrant system never materialised; all at the expense some 52 lives.

Even Nigerian and Igbo historian, Gloria Chuku, writes:

“Despite the persistence of the women during the Ogu, ultimately the colonial authority prevailed”.[4]

Nevertheless, the Ogu was one of, if not the, paramount event(s) that garnered Nigerian women political visibility. If anything, the Ohandum encouraged women to speak up and take action against all odds, setting the stage for more proactive women’s movements during the decolonial era of the following decades.

The rise of nationalism

The 1940s and 1950s saw an upsurge in Nigerian nationalism and, subsequently, the mass political mobilisation of women.

With the rise of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) — one of the major political parties in Nigeria — the political centre of the southeastern provinces began to shift towards Lagos. This shift to urban centres aided women by providing a more cosmopolitan environment ripe for the formation of ethnic- and career-based associations. It, too, meant that these organisations could remain in close proximity to the likes of large political entities such as the NCNC.

Collusion between these groups of women and NCNC members took shape thereafter with some women hosting NCNC gatherings in their homes. Women such as Mary Nzimiro — largely regarded by delegates as the “Mother of NCNC” in Port Harcourt — were paramount in this regard. Other female figures who rose to prominence during this time included Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, accredited with the formation of the NWU — later the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS) — in 1949. The FNWS was, for the most part, independent of any nationalist movement and focused on women’s issues in the southeast.

Mrs Ransome-Kuti did, however, state in an interview:

“the organisation [FNWS] is ready to co-operate and support any political party that works for the uplift and progress of womanhood”.

She, along with the leaders of the Aba Women’s Association (AWA) and Enugu Women’s Association (EWA), helped provide women with resources and the means to engage in the politics of the NCNC, propelling women to positions of higher authority within the larger sphere of nationalist movements.

Nzimiro and Iheukumere, for example, were elected as members of the NCNC’s National Executive Committee and Central Working Committee for the duration of the 1950s.

According to Gloria Chuku, it was Igbo women in key positions such as these who played a pivotal role in obtaining the NCNC’s needed seats during the National Assembly to elect Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe into power.

In essence, the NCNC was somewhat reliant on southeastern women to covet the vote. Igbo women, then, were particularly important in mobilising the local womenfolk for the nationalist movement against the colonial administration. Without them, the struggle towards independence in 1960 may very well have been delayed.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900–1978). Taken from Black Past, photo by UNESCO (CC BY-SA 3.0)

“Mother Politics”

Despite all this, my experience with studying the multi-faceted aspects of sub-Saharan Africa’s history has led me, on many occasions thus far, to conclude that there is an obvious agenda that seeks to hide and undermine the role of African women in the forging of their modern nation states.

The story of Nigeria is just one of them.

And of course this is not unlike the rest of the world; women’s history in general is pitted against a bias agenda worldwide. But, in the African context, I find it that much harder to uncover the history of women based on two things:

1) Most of all our intact, accurate records are from the old colonial administrations. So, naturally, there is a problematic bias that must be navigated thereof.

2) What historians such as Clara Sedzro and Joyce Chadya coin “Mother Politics”; this being a ploy by nationalists to use the image of the woman as the nation’s “mother” or “caregiver” for propaganda without acknowledging the woman as her own self-governing, anti-colonial proponent.[5] [6]

You see, nationalist movements across the African continent needed as much traction as possible in order to gain freedom and independence.

And to achieve this, they had to cater to all groups, women especially.

Once freedom was achieved, however — in Nigeria’s case, that being 1960 — the veil would be pulled back. Organisations such as the NCNC were not all-inclusive as they outwardly projected; the anti-colonial struggle, itself, was driven by a different coloured patricentric agenda.

Women were merely used as propaganda to rile the masses. Their importance as “mothers” and “caregivers” of the nation was quickly dismissed once freedom had been achieved. Their male cohorts feared their independence and political activity, resolving to suppress it as much as possible, to maintain an iron-grip on their weapons of anti-colonial struggle; and that is, indeed, what women were seen as: mere tools.

Even when looking at other anti-colonial organisations across the continent, such as South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), a similar sad tale is ever present.

For Nigeria, the effects just happen to be more extreme.

In 2022, 61,29% of Rwanda’s national parliament consisted of women (top leftmost). Nigeria (bottom rightmost), meanwhile, consistently ranked as one of the lowest across the whole continent with only a measly 3,91% of it’s parliament consisting of women. Graph taken from Statista.

Today, Nigeria continues to lack a significant womanly presence amongst its seats of power, especially when compared to some of its fellow African states. The immediate problem of colonialism was dealt with, but its lasting entrenchment of the patriarchy has yet to be addressed.

The country seems, for the most part, free of the “white” aspect of Achebe’s quote; but the “man” is more prevalent than ever, and he certainly still holds a knife on the things that held women together. It is thus important to remember the histories and remember them correctly. Women were there; women fought for their country; and women were, and forever are, an integral part to Nigeria’s society.

While the world has heard of its Okonkwos — its Azikiwes and Macaulays — it needs to hear more of its Achikes — its Nwanyeruwas and Ransome-Kutis. For as another famous Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, wrote:

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Defiance is like marijuana — it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”[7]

References:

[1] Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart” (London: William Heinemann Ltd).

[2] Allen, Judith v. 1972. “‘Sitting on a Man’: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of

Igbo Women.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 165–181.

[3] Bastian, Misty L. 2002. “‘Vultures of the Marketplace: Southeastern Nigerian Women and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaanyi (Women’s War) of 1929'.” In Women in African Colonial Histories, by Misty L Bastian, edited by Jean Allman, Susan Geiger and Nakanyike Musisi, 260–281. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[4] Chuku, Gloria. 2009. “Igbo Women and Political Participation in Nigeria, 1800s-2005.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 42 (1): 81–103.

[5] Sedzro, Clara. 2023. “Nationalism Through a Gendered Lens: Women’s Movements During the Anti-Colonial Struggle”. New England Journal of Political Sciences.

[6] Chadya, Joyce M. 2003. “Mother Politics: Anti-Colonial Nationalism and the Woman Question in Africa.” Journal of Women’s History 15 (3): 153–157. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/48859

[7] Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2003. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Algonquin Books.