Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 03:18 pm
World’s leading technology company, Google, changed its logo into a Doodle in honour of Late Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a teacher, women’s rights activist, political campaigner, and aristocrat, who would have turned 119th today.
She was also the first female Nigerian to drive a car.
Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google’s homepages to mark important festivals, holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures.
Ransome-Kuti’s doodle was illustrated by Nigerian-Italian artist, Diana Ejaita, which portrays a strong leader who pioneered one of the most formidable social movements of the twentieth century.
Ransome-Kuti, who was born on the 25th of October, 1900, in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun state, is one of the most prominent figures in Nigerian history who paved the way for women in the country to have better lives.
According to a post on Wikipedia, “Ransome-Kuti, inspired women across Nigeria through her brave acts and most notably her fight for women in the country. She took part in the pre-independence conferences that laid the groundwork for Nigeria’s First Republic.”
“Throughout her career, she was known as an educator and activist. She and Elizabeth Adekogbe provided dynamic leadership for women’s rights in the 1950s. Ransome-Kuti founded an organization for women in Abeokuta called the Abeokuta Women’s Union, with a membership tally of more than 20,000 individuals, spanning both literate and illiterate women,” says Wikipedia.
She gave birth to three sons, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nigerian musician, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre and human rights activist, Beko Ransome-Kuti, a doctor; and Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a doctor and health minister. She was also grandmother to musicians Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti.
Ransome-Kuti died on 13 April 1978 as a result of the injuries sustained when she was thrown from a third-floor window of Fela’s compound, a commune known as the Kalakuta Republic, by soldiers who stormed the place and destroyed it.
Fela waxed an album about the tragedy that he called “Unknown Soldier”.
