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| Margaret Ekpo |
Margaret Aniemewue Ekpo, noted for mobilizing women both rich and
poor to fight for their economic and political rights and participate in
politics, entered into politics under unforeseen circumstances.
In the 1940s, her husband, who was a doctor, had been strongly
against the discriminatory treatment being given to indigenous medical
staff by the British colonial administration, but since he was a civil
servant, he could not attend meetings organized by Nigerians to protest
the unfair treatment.
Hence, Ekpo took his place by attending such meetings, acting as the
mouthpiece of her husband and eventually entering into mainstream
political activity.
Ekpo was born in 1924 in the settlement of Creek Town in Cross River
State, southeastern Nigeria at a period when women were not allowed to
vote as the country was under British colonial rule. After having
received much of her early education in Nigeria, Ekpo, in 1946, got the
chance to study abroad at what is now Dublin Institute of Technology in
Dublin, Ireland, where she earned a diploma in domestic science before
returning to Nigeria to set up a sewing institute in Aba.
The teacher and political activist would later become a major force
in Nigeria’s politics by first becoming politically active through the
meetings she attended in place of her husband and by fighting for basic
needs of the average woman in her society.
In 1946, the pioneering feminist founded the Market Women Association
to unionize women in the city of Aba in Nigeria’s Abia State. Knowing
that the movements for civil rights for women around the world was
growing, Ekpo wanted same for the women in her country but this was not
without challenges as men were not releasing their wives to join the
Market Women Association.
Things changed after World War II as a smart Ekpo gained control of
the sale of salt when it became scarce, giving orders that women who did
not belong to the association should not have salt sold to them,
according to Information Nigeria. The men subsequently had to
release their wives to join the group which grew within a decade into a
platform to fight for the economic and political rights of women.
Ekpo would later become an active member of the National Council of
Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) party, where she got nominated as a
special member of the influential regional House of Chiefs to represent
women. The strong and outspoken woman got further charged into politics
during a rally in Aba by the NCNC when she listened to burning speeches
by activists such as Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe Mazi and Mbonu Ojike, all urging
the Nigerian people to rise and fight for independence.
Being the only woman at the rally, many were confused and wondered
what she was doing there when she should be at home taking care of her family.
But that did not stop Ekpo from her political activism. In the 1950s,
she joined political campaigner and women’s rights activist, Funmilayo
Ransome-Kuti to protest killings at an Enugu coal mine in which victims
were said to be protesting the colonial practices at the mine.
After being nominated by the NCNC to the regional House of Chiefs in
1953 and establishing the Aba Township Women’s Association a year after,
Ekpo became the leader of the new market group which she subsequently
turned into a political pressure group.
By 1955, women voters in Aba had grown in numbers through her
activism and after Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Ekpo got
elected to the Eastern Regional House of Assembly, making her the first
woman in Aba to attain that position and one of the few female
politicians in the country to be elected to such an office.
With this position, she encouraged more women to enter into politics
while fighting to improve their political and economic needs such as
pushing for major roads leading to various markets to be improved and
other rural road infrastructure.
Ekpo would continue to be an elected politician until the start of
the Nigerian-Biafran civil war in 1967 when she was detained by Biafran
authorities for three years under harsh conditions making her ill at a
point due to lack of food.
Before her death on September 21, 2006, the then president
Olusegun Obasanjo renamed the airport in Calabar, a city near her place
of birth, after her as an appreciation for her role in the independence
struggle of the country and the advancement of women’s rights.
Thus, from November 2001, the Calabar International Airport became known
as the Margaret Ekpo International Airport, making it the only African
airport to be named after a woman.
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