Resistance, Revolt, Revolution

Women's resistances in 1900s Nigeria created and curated by nwaobiala

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Photograph by Eliot Elisofon

Nwaobiala (1925)

Nwaobiala began with a “miraculous birth” that occurred before October 1925. The term “Nwaobiala” can be translated into “child from the heart/center of Ala (the land)”. In Igbo culture, it believed that Ala (the earth deity) has influence in the form of a newborn child. It seems Ala sent a warning through the “miraculous birth” of a child about the people’s transgressions.

Igbo women have long used egwu (song/dancing) to publicly shame local male authorities and voice their grievances and demands (it is part of the Igbo custom of “sitting on a man”). Nwaobiala employed this tactic against colonial power: the British first began seeing Nwaobiala, bands (several hundred) of dancing women, in November 1925 somewhere near Atta in Okigwe district. Nwaobiala would sweep public spaces (pathways, market places, and shrines) while gathering information about the homes of warrant chiefs and other colonially affiliated men. After discovering where these men lived, Nwaobiala would enter their compounds and begin another dance/song while expressing their demands.

Some of the notable demands of Nwaobiala include: demands for cleanliness of compounds and markets; and returning to the traditional culture of girls being naked. Because there is a connection between contamination and child-birth in Igbo culture, Igbo women perform purification responsibilities which include cleaning of pathways (paths between villages or between the village and a shrine). Traditionally, women created pathways (ama) but as colonial needs took priority, government road construction ran counter to, crossed through, or destroyed the women’s pathways. The “unpurifiable roads” were a direct threat to women’s power and interests.  

In terms of demanding the nudity of girls and according to translation of the demands, Nwaobiala believed, “that no girls or young married women should wear cloth until they were with first child, but go naked as in old days” and “that women must be kept naked so that privates must be kept warm by the sun.” As Christian missionaries took root in Igbo land, they urged girls to wear clothing and subsequently encouraged young girls/women to participate in the market. Traditionally, clothing was a symbol of maturity and the market was a place for mature women. As a result, the social value of cloth-wearing older women declined.

In conclusion, Nwaobiala understood how Christianity and colonial power threatened Indigenous culture, economic practices, and power structures. They sought to rectify this through collective power and traditional forms of protest (egwu). However, the British did not acknowledge Nwaobiala’s egwu as a protest due to their colonial mindset and patriarchy—they did not believe women could demonstrate without men. The Nwaobiala protests were the precursor to the 1929 Ogu Umunwaanyi, The Women’s War.

Additional Information: According to Uche U. Okonkwo Nwaobiala was present in Akpuje and Owelli towns of Awka, in the Onitsha Province of Ihiala, Nnewi, and Nobi town: in Ohazara, Okigwe, Bende and Umuahia. Even more, “women from Owerri province came to Ihiala [and] from Ihiala, they visited Nnewi, and from Nnewi they proceeded to Nobi.”

Sources:

Hodgson, Dorothy Louise.. "Wicked" women and the reconfiguration of gender in Africa. Portsmouth, N.H. : Heinemann ; c2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.99037.0001.001.

Okonkwo, Uche U. (2020). Herbert Macaulay As The Father of Nigeria’s Nationalism: A Historical

Misnomer and Misogyny Regarding the Role of Igbo Women in the Decolonization Process. Journal of International Women's Studies, 21(1), 172-184.

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Statue of Madam Udo Udoma (from Ikot Abasi) who wrestled and seized a gun from one of the policemen and broke it into two / Photograph by _@Enenim_

Ogu Umunwaanyi: The Women’s War (1929)

The British had created a system of “indirect rule” whereby they chose local Nigerian representatives, Warrant Chiefs, to rule through. The British divided Igboland into Native Court areas and each area was governed by a Warrant Chief. This system uprooted Indigenous political power structures but that is not all it did.

A town in Owerri called Oloko was governed by Warrant Chief Okugo. A rumor had begun to spread that the British tax that only applied to men was going to be extended to women. At the time, the Igbo economy had become based on palm oil and the price of palm oil products fell yet the British did not adjust the tax. So when rumors began to spread about an additional tax, it did not sit well with Igbo women.

In late 1929, Warrant Chief Okugo entered the compound of a married, elderly woman, Nwanyeruwa, and demanded that she count her animals. She responded angrily saying, “Was your mother counted?” meaning that women were not required to answer census questions and were not taxed. Nwanyeruwa shared her story through the women’s network in Oloko. As a response, the Oloko trio—Ikonnia, Mwannedia and Nwugo—decided to organize a protest against women’s taxation. They sent messages to neighboring villages via palm leaves to invite women to the protest. Sometime in November, over 10,000 women gathered around the District Office, demanding tax assurance and later, the removal of Warrant Chief Okugo. After days of protest in which the women danced and sang as well as mobbed and damaged Okugo’s home, the no-women-tax written assurance was given to the women. However, Okugo retaliated and because of women’s protests, he was removed as Warrant Chief, charged with assault, and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.

The news of the victory spread across Igbo Land and anti-tax as well as anti-Warrant Chief system organizing from Calabar to Owerri continued! Women would dress in war clothing (sackcloth, face paint, heads wrapped in fern) ready to wage war against colonial institutions: notably groups of women would damage (and sometimes burn) government buildings and Native Courts in Ikot Ekpene, Utu Etim Ekpo, Abak, and Opobo. The British responded by shooting, killing, and injuring many women using guns. It is also claimed that the British burned entire villages as collective punishment. Eventually in 1933, the British replaced the Warrant Chief system with ‘massed benches’, where several judges convened to make decisions.

Highly Recommended Reading:

Mba, Nina Emma. Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965. [Berkeley]: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.

Sources:

Bernhardt, A. (2010, October 04). Global Nonviolent Action Database. Retrieved August 27, 2020, from https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/igbo-women-campaign-rights-womens-war-nigeria-1929 Perham, M. (n.d.). Riot or Rebellion? The Women's Market Rebellion of 1929: AHA. Retrieved August 27, 2020, from https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/through-the-lens-of-history-biafra-nigeria-the-west-and-the-world/the-colonial-and-pre-colonial-eras-in-nigeria/the-womens-market-rebellion-of-1929 Harman, M. (2017, March 08). Aba Women's War of 1929. Retrieved August 27, 2020, from https://libcom.org/library/aba-womens-war-1929-0

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Photograph by Eliot Elisofon

Lagos Market Women’s Association (1940)

The Lagos Market Women’s Association (LMWA) was active in the mid-1920s, led by Madam Alimotu Pelewura with a membership of over 8,000 market women. In 1932, a rumor spread that the British colonial government was going to start taxing women for the first time. The LMWA organized, met with the administrator of the colony, and obtained a written assurance that women would not be taxed. That assurance was breached in 1940.

In March 1940, the government issued an Income Tax Ordinance, mandating a tax on women with yearly incomes less than 50 pounds/year paying a flat rate of 5 pounds while women who earned more than 50 pounds would be taxed by the pound. In December 1940, the women shut down the Lagos market and marched to the office of the Commissioner. It is reported that around 10,000 women participated. Dissatisfied with the response of the Commissioner, the women marched to the Governor’s House, where only Pelewura and one other woman met with the Governor while the other women were prohibited from entering. In the end the Governor refused to rescind the ordinance. The LMWA continued to organize meetings with high attendance records (one particular meeting at Glover Memorial Hall estimated to have had 7,000 people in attendance).

In January 1941, LMWA set up another meeting with the Commissioner and eventually, the government increased the taxable income threshold to 100 pounds. With this concession, the LMWA campaigns ended.

Highly Recommended Reading:

Mba, Nina Emma. Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965. [Berkeley]: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1982.

Johnson-Odim, C. (2011). Pelewura, Alimotu. African American Studies Center. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.49750

Sources:

Leidecker, L. (2012, November 11). Global Nonviolent Action Database. Retrieved August 27, 2020, from https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/lagos-market-women-campaign-remove-income-tax-nigeria-1940-1941

Kamm, Emily, "Price Control, Profiteering, and Public Cooperation: the Lagos Market Women's Association and the Limits of Colonial Control" (2016). University Honors Theses. Paper 309. https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.320

http://www.vestiges-journal.info/2018/pdf/somotan_2018.pdf

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photograph 1: Funmilayo-Ransome Kuti in her twenties

Abeokuta Women’s Union (1947)

In the early 1940s, the British government tried to implement a series of price controls and confiscation of food goods as a way to offset shortages due to World War II. In Abeokuta, the government was seizing rice from market women. In September 1945, three members of the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club (ALC, an organization led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti), and three members from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) went to the district officer for Abeokuta to demand an end to the seizure of women’s rice. Following this action, several protest delegations were sent to the district officer (DO), assistant district officer, and the Egba Native Administration Council and nothing changed. Eventually, the ALC held a public press conference. Daily Service, a publication, wrote an article about the demonstration, quoting AWU leaders: “We the members of the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club, on behalf of all Egba women, appeal to the press of Nigeria to help to bring the seriousness of the position [of the market women] to the attention of the authorities before it is too late.” Shortly after the article was published, the confiscation of rice ended. The victory brought about more membership to the ALC. And in March 1946, the Abeokuta Ladies Club became the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU).

The AWU continued to apply pressure by putting together a list of demands which included the end to flat-rate taxation of women, the abdication of the Alake (the head of traditional local authority, put in place by the British), the end to the Sole Native Authority (SNA) and a more representative system of government that included women. As time went on, the AWU documented the current Alake’s, Ademola II, abuses of power ranging from his leasing of land that did not belong to him to expatriates, his support of food and price control, the violent enforcement of regulations, and inappropriate sexual relations within the dipeomu system—a system whereby women can leave their husbands and reside in the Alake’s palace. The AWU also demanded for better public services such as proper sanitation, medical and educational facilities.

Throughout 1946, the AWU sent several petitions to the Alake and hosted many meetings and demonstrations. However, in late 1946, the Alake decided to increase the flat-rate tax on women. In response, the AWU relentlessly held a series of mass demonstrations, sent petitions to colonial authorities, and letters to editors of major newspapers throughout 1947 and 1948. This resulted in multiple arrests, a lot of harassment, and a variety of bannings (of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti) as retaliation. Eventually on January 3,1949, Ademola II abdicated as Alake. Nonetheless, the struggle wasn’t over.

On January 15, 1951, Ademola was reinstated as Alake and in 1952, the Central Council voted to restore the water rate tax on women. In return, the AWU continued to send petitions and hold protests. Finally in 1960, the water rate tax was abolished. In conclusion, the Abeokuta Women’s Union has an impressive and extensive history of political demonstrations for women’s rights and power.

Highly Recommended Reading/Sources: Johnson-Odim, C., & Mba, N. E. (1997). “Lioness of Lisabi” The Fall of a Ruler. In For women and the nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria (pp. 66-94). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Other Notable Protests by Women

Calabar Market Women’s Revolt of 1924

Tax Protests of 1938

Oil Mill Protests of the 1940s in Owerri and Calabar Provinces

Tax Revolt in Aba and Onitsha (1956)