Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

We continue our conversation on the low female representation in political office in Nigeria with Ufoma Nnamdi Ude, Executive Director of Enough is Enough, a civic society organisation.

I have also heard political analysts say, you know what, these younger generation of women are not audacious enough to run for office like the Fumilayo's, Ransom Kuti's of that time, the Magretepo's of that time.

What does the data say?

It's not about audacity.

These soldiers threw a 77-year-old woman out of a second story window.

She was Fela's mother, and she died from her injuries months later.

That reaction That crackdown from Nigeria's military dictatorship shows the real power of this song.

That power is why this song is still being played today, nearly 50 years after it was recorded, including on this radio show in Texas right now.

She went to England to further her education from 1919 to 1923.

There she discovered socialism and anti-colonial thought.

When she returned to her hometown, she made a point of speaking her mother tongue, Yoruba, rather than English, the language of the colonizer, even when she was talking to colonial authorities.

That choice To speak her own language to the people who had colonized her country was the first of many deliberate acts of defiance that would define her life.