Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas on October 25, 1900, in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Educated at Abeokuta Grammar School and Winchmore Hill School in England, she dedicated her life to dismantling colonial rule and traditional patriarchy. In the 1940s, she organized the Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU), mobilizing tens of thousands of market women against oppressive colonial taxation and traditional abuses by the Alake of Egbaland, eventually forcing his temporary abdication.

Recognized internationally as an anti-colonial strategist and socialist intellectual, Ransome-Kuti travelled worldwide, befriending figures such as Mao Zedong and receiving the Lenin Peace Prize in 1970. She was the mother of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and medical human rights leaders Beko and Olikoye. In February 1977, when military soldiers raided Fela's Kalakuta Republic compound, she was thrown from a second-story window, succumbing to her severe injuries the following year.