Here are Some Brave Women Warriors that can not be Forgetting in the History of Nigeria
Nigeria women are indeed great people. There are some Nigeria women who cannot be forgotten in the history of Nigeria.
Here are some brave female warriors in Nigeria history:
1. Queen Amina (c.1533-1610)
Queen Amina of Zaria was the first woman to become the Sarauniya (queen) in a male-dominated society. She expanded the territory of the Hausa people of north Africa to its largest borders in history. Much of what is known of Queen Amina is based on information related in the Kano Chronicles. Other details are pulled from the oral traditions of Nigeria.
As a result, the memory of Queen Amina has assumed legendary proportions in her native Hausaland and beyond. The modern state of Nigeria has immortalized Amina by erecting a statue of her, spear in hand, on a horse, in the centre of Lagos.
The seven original states of Hausaland—Katsina, Daura, Kano, Zazzau, Gobir, Rano and Garun Gabas—cover an area of approximately 500 square miles and comprise the heart of Hausaland. In the 16th century, Queen Bakwa Turunku, Amina’s mother, built the capital of Zazzau at Zaria, named after her younger daughter. Eventually, the entire state of Zazzau was renamed Zaria, which is now a province in present-day Nigeria.
Amina was born around 1533 in Zaria. She lived approximately 200 years prior to the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate federation that governed Nigeria during the period of British colonial rule following the Islamic jihad (holy war) that overtook the region in the 19th century.
She was born to the ruler, Bakwa of Turunku, who lived in the city state of Zazzau. The family was wealthy as a result of trading in imported metals, cloth, cola, salt, horses and imported metals. When her father died in 1566, the crown was conferred upon Amina’s younger brother, Karama.
Although her father’s reign was characterised by peace and prosperity, Amina nonetheless chose to spend her time honing her military skills with the warriors of the Zazzau cavalry.
This led to her eventually emerging as a leader of the Zazzau cavalry, during which time she accumulated great wealth and numerous military accolades. Upon the death of her brother after a 10 year rule, Amina had matured into a fierce warrior and earned the respect of the Zazzau military, so she was able to assume the reign of the kingdom.
The context of Queen Amina’s leadership was pre-colonial Nigeria, where men did not feel threatened when women were in powerful positions, as it was usually understood that they deserved to be there because of age, kinship or merit, not gender. Women could even oust men who were not performing their duties effectively.
While socially and economically, pre-colonial Nigerian societies clearly delineated women’s and men’s roles this did not preclude women from asserting their authority or themselves.
At the time of Amina’s reign, Zazzau was situated at the crossroads of three major trade corridors of northern Africa, connecting the Sahara with the remote markets of the southern forest lands and the western Sudan. The rise and fall of the powerful and more dominant Songhai people, and the resulting competition for control of trade routes, incited continual warring among the Hausa people and their neighbouring settlements during the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the continual competition for power among the Hausa states, Zaria for a time achieved predominance under Queen Amina. ‘She led her first military charge a few months after assuming power. For the rest of her 34 year reign, she continued to fight and expand her kingdom to its greatest in history.’ Heading up an army of 20,000 men, she tried to annex several surrounding cities up to Nupe, and ruled Kano and Katsina at the cost of 34 years of almost uninterrupted warfare. The objectives of her conquests were twofold: extension of Zazzau beyond its primary borders and reduction of conquered cities to vassal status.
The expansion of Amina’s kingdom made it the trading centre for all of southern Hausaland, spanning the traditional east-to-west trans-Saharan axis and guaranteeing Zaria’s prosperity.
Amina brought unheard-of wealth to the land; one description cites a tribute payment of 40 eunuchs and 10,000 kola nuts. ‘She boosted her kingdom’s wealth and power with gold, slaves and new crops. Because her people were talented metal workers, Amina introduced metal armour, including iron helmets and chain mail, to her army.’
Amina is also credited as the architect of the strong earthen walls around the city, which became the prototype for the fortifications used in all Hausa states. She built many of these fortifications, later known as ganuwar Amina or ‘Amina’s walls’, around various conquered cities. Many of these walls remain in existence to this day.
2. Moremi Ajasoro
Queen Moremi lived in the 12th century. She came from Offa, and was married to Oranmiyan, the heir to the king of Ife and founding father of the Yoruba people, Oduduwa. Ile-Ife was a kingdom that was said to have been at war with an adjoining tribe who were known to them as the Forest people. (Ìgbò in the Yoruba language, though the said tribe is believed by scholars to have had no relation to the contemporary Ìgbòs of modern Nigeria). Scores of Ife citizens were being enslaved by these people, and because of this they were generally regarded with disdain by the Yoruba city-states.
Although the people of Ile-Ife were furious about these raids, they did not have the means to defend themselves. This is because the invaders were seen as spirits by the people of Ife, appearing as masquerades completely covered in raffia leaves.
Moremi was a very brave and beautiful woman who, in order to deal with the problem facing her people, pledged a great sacrifice to the Spirit of the river Esimirin so that she could discover the strength of her nation's enemies.
She is said to have been taken as a slave by the Igbo and, due to her beauty and Esimirin's help, married their ruler as his anointed queen. After familiarizing herself with the secrets of her new husband's army, she escaped to Ile-Ife and revealed this to the Yorubas, who were then able to subsequently defeat them in battle.
Following the war she returned to her first husband, King Oramiyan of Ife who immediately had her re-instated as his queen. Moremi returned to the Esimirin River to fulfill her pledge. The river demanded she sacrificed her only son, Oluorogbo.
The demand was inconceivable and Moremi pleaded with the god for a less terrible offering. But in the end, she kept her promise and paid the price. The offering of Oluorogbo to the river god grieved not only Moremi but the whole kingdom of Ife. The Yoruba people consoled Moremi by offering to be her eternal children a promise kept until today.
3. Efunsetan Aniwura (c. 1790s – June 30, 1874)
The story of Efunsetan Aniwura is perhaps one of the most motivating thrillers in Yoruba political history.
The 1700s up to 1900 were centuries of great wars and arms build-up in the vast Yoruba country of old. It was a period of great revolutions and social upheavals across the Yoruba country. It saw the massive production of weapons and the importation of military hardwares by Yoruba leaders.
The story of Efunsetan Aniwura is intriguing. Her date of birth remains uncertain, but she must have been born around 1790s or around that period. Yoruba epic films and folklores portray Efunsetan as a very vicious woman, filled with prejudice, a woman who died in tragic circumstances. But there are hidden thrills and heroic feat that those who wrote his history continue to undermine.
This woman of substance has been consistently portrayed as a villain who ran a Gestapo of sorrow and blood, a blood-sucker who beheaded people’s head at will. We must deconstruct the narrative that veiled real stories under the cover of the superiority of men over the distinction of some brave women in our troubled history. Efunsetan was the son of an Egba farmer, Ogunrin, a native of Egba Oke-Ona. She rose to become the Iyalode of Ibadan.
She was the first woman to set up a flourishing agrarian economy that employed no fewer than 2000 men and women. Around 1850, worried by the spread of war and combat in the Yoruba country, she introduced infantry military training into the midst of her workers. She was said to have had her own military training in urban and guerrilla warfare after which she requested that the same training be impacted on her slaves, about 2000 of them.
The workers mainly worked in the vast farmland. They produced cash crops, cotton, groundnuts, maize and beef. She was said to be in possession of a vast dairy farm that could feed the entire Yoruba country and beyond. She traded up to Ghana and the Hausa country and even exported her produce to Europe.
4. Madam Efunroye Tinubu, Iyalode of Egbaland (c.1805-1887).
Born in the Egba Land of the Yoruba people of West Africa at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tinubu learned commerce from her grandmother, a successful trader. As a young woman Tinubu married a local man and bore him two sons, but she was widowed following the family’s migration to the town of Abeokuta in 1830. Shortly afterward she met Adele, a deposed king of Lagos, married him, and moved with her new husband and sons to the coastal town of Badagry, where Adele was temporarily recognized as ruler.
Tinubu arrived in Badagry at a time when the then illegal Atlantic slave trade was peaking on the eastern Slave Coast. Although her sons soon died, she used two slaves, allegedly a gift from her father, to trade between Abeokuta and the coast in slaves and other commodities. Never again blessed with children, she invested her growing income from trade in slaves and other retainers, beginning the process of amassing personal followers and expanding her commercial operations.
In 1835, Adele was invited back to Lagos to become king once again, and Tinubu accompanied him as a royal wife. Following her husband’s death two years later, she married Yesefu Bada (also known as Obadina), a successful Muslim warrior and favored retainer of the new king, Oluwole, ensuring Tinubu continued access to the commercial and other advantages associated with royal patronage.
In the bitter succession dispute between Akitoye and Kosoko that followed Oluwole’s death in 1841, Tinubu and Obadina actively supported Akitoye, who was initially crowned king but was defeated in 1845 and forced with his followers into exile at Badagry. Throughout these years of political turmoil, Tinubu seized opportunities to expand her trade and build a large and powerful household of slaves and other retainers. She also took a keen interest in Islam, which was spreading in Lagos.
When in 1851 the British, encouraged by Akitoye, bombarded Lagos, deposed Kosoko, and reinstated Akitoye as king in the name of ending the Atlantic slave trade and developing new kinds of commerce, Tinubu returned to the town. A fierce defender of African interests and autonomy, she soon ran afoul of the British, however, and was eventually driven by them out of Lagos and into exile at Abeokuta.
There Tinubu reestablished a large household and used her slaves and retainers to produce and trade palm produce, a new export, and other commodities. She also began exercising considerable influence in politics in Abeokuta and was eventually recognized as the iyalode, or leading female chief, in the town.
Although the British represented Tinubu as an inveterate slave trader and fierce opponent of abolition, she was committed more to the success of her own political factions and to African autonomy than she was to a particular kind of foreign trade. Tinubu is significant historically both for her own activities and achievements and as an unusually well-documented example of a type of powerful precolonial West African woman, too often obscured from the historical record.
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