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The Abeokuta Women’s Revolt, also known as the Egba Women’s Tax Riot, was a resistance movement championed by the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU) and led by two middle-class women, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and Grace Eniola Soyinka, in the late 1940s. The major issue which the movement revolted against centred on the imposition of unfair taxation particularly on young women by the British colonial government in Nigeria.

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The Abeokuta Women’s Union was preceded by the Abeokuta Ladies Club which equally fought against the confiscation of the goods of market women amongst other things. Abeokuta Ladies Club metamorphosed into Abeokuta Women’s Union in 1946 with the main goal of addressing some of the broader challenges facing the generality of women in Abeokuta.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, later known as the fiery mother of Afrobeat legend, Fela; and the first woman to drive a car in Nigeria, was also married to a prominent teacher in Abeokuta. With her precedence in the Abeokuta Women’s Union & Abeokuta Ladies Club, she proceeded to organize women for the great marches between 1947 and 1949 and to drown Alake and the British government in petitions.

Funmilayo had founded the Abeokuta Women’s Union with Grace Eniola Soyinka, her sister-in-law and when they later formalized the union, it was hard for the government to declare them an illegal body. Part of the AWU goal was to enlighten groups of women, protest unjust taxes, fight corruption, ensuring more of women’s representation in decision-making in corridors of power and so on.

Many of these women under the banner of the Abeokuta Women’s Union refused to pay the imposed tax and for this, they either ended up in jail or fined heavily. These rounds of intimidation did not make the women relent in their effort to fight the policy. They kept sending out several petitions to the Alake of Abeokuta between August 1946 and May 1947.

By October of 1946, a meeting between the Alake and a delegation of the AWU held but it ended in a stalemate. Rather than review the tax rate in question, the Alake – with the support of British Resident – worsened the situation further by increasing the flat-rate tax on women in Abeokuta.

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From an initial population of about 1000 protesters which Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti led, the number of those who marched and camped in front of the Alake’s palace rose to 10,000 and the Alake finally abdicated in January 1949.

The movement, at that opportune moment, not only targeted the British tax imposition but it also challenged the hypocrisy of some local figurehead chiefs which the British used indirectly to enforce their rule and enrich their purses.

If aggressive agitation was ever effective in protests in Nigeria, the Abeokuta Women’s Revolt was one of such examples as it resulted in sweeping changes within the society. The headstrong Alake of Egbaland, who was progressively showing signs of being a stooge of the British colonial government, was literally forced to abscond from the throne in shame. The draconian and inconvenient tax policy imposed on the women of Abeokuta got suspended. The Sole Native Authority (SNA) system which was the model for colonial governance in most parts of pre-colonial southern Nigeria was changed so that four women had positions in the new system of administration in Abeokuta.

And for many decades to come, governments evidently had a rethink anytime a law which would negatively impact the economic and communal condition of women was well screened before it was passed into law.

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This article was first published on 13th March 2020

adedoyin

Macaddy is mostly a farmer in the day who also dabbles into technology at night, in search of other cutting edge intersections. He's on Twitter @i_fix_you

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