In the second decade of the twentieth century, Abeokuta stood at the centre of a profound political transition. British colonial authority was tightening across Southern Nigeria, and the pressures of the First World War intensified demands placed on local communities. Obligations multiplied, authority shifted, and many Egba people felt that decisions affecting their lives were increasingly removed from their own institutions.
It was within this charged civic atmosphere that Funmilayo Ransome Kuti spent her early years. Long before she became known as a nationalist figure and women’s rights leader, Abeokuta itself was already a town shaped by political debate, resistance, and arguments about justice and accountability.
Funmilayo belonged to a generation that came of age as Abeokuta wrestled with new realities. Her education at Abeokuta Grammar School placed her within an emerging class exposed to Western learning, Christian institutions, and civic discussion. By the late 1910s, even those not directly involved in politics lived in a town where governance, authority, and fairness were discussed openly in homes, churches, markets, and schools.
The 1918 Egba Uprising, Roots of Resistance
The conflict of 1918, often referred to as the Adubi War or the Abeokuta disturbances, grew from mounting frustration over colonial demands during the war years. These included labour obligations, requisitions tied to the imperial war effort, and pressures associated with taxation. For many Egba communities, these demands represented not only economic strain but an erosion of local autonomy.
The uprising reflected a deeper struggle over authority. Colonial administration reshaped existing power structures, elevating certain offices while weakening others. Ordinary people experienced the system as harsh and distant, and by 1918, tensions erupted into open resistance across parts of Egba territory.
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Suppression and a Changed Civic Climate
Colonial forces moved quickly to suppress the uprising. The period that followed was marked by arrests, heightened surveillance, and a tightening of administrative control. Abeokuta entered a phase of political pressure in which fear, caution, and debate became part of everyday life.
What mattered most was not only the defeat of the uprising but the way it reshaped public conversation. Questions of responsibility, punishment, leadership, and legitimacy dominated discussion. People reflected on who held power, how it was exercised, and whether justice could exist under colonial authority.
Indigenous political and religious institutions, long central to Egba governance, faced growing constraint during this period. Colonial officials often dismissed or sidelined systems they did not fully understand, contributing to a broader contraction of space for independent local authority. The cumulative effect was a civic environment in which control was increasingly external, and legitimacy was constantly contested.
Egba Governance and the Crisis of Authority
Before colonial rule, Abeokuta operated through layered systems of governance. Authority rested not in a single ruler but in a balance among the Alake, councils of chiefs, lineages, religious institutions, and community structures. Colonial administration altered this balance by concentrating power within frameworks designed to be supervised from above.
This shift produced lasting tension. Many Egba leaders sought to preserve dignity, legitimacy, and moral authority within their society, while navigating a political system that allowed little room for genuine autonomy. The aftermath of the 1918 uprising intensified these struggles, pushing political debate into new forms.
From Armed Resistance to Organised Advocacy
In the years following the uprising, sections of the Egba elite increasingly turned to organised advocacy. Professionals and merchants, particularly those connected to Lagos, formed associations and networks that relied on petitions, correspondence, and political negotiation rather than open confrontation.
Figures such as J. K. Coker were part of this evolving political world. Egba associational politics aimed to influence colonial decision making on matters affecting Abeokuta, including administration, leadership, and the treatment of local institutions. This approach reflected a strategic adaptation, a belief that organised civic pressure could achieve what rebellion could not.. It reinforced the idea that resistance could take structured, collective, and intellectual form
This shift reshaped Abeokuta’s political cultures, and that legitimacy mattered as much as force.
1920, The Throne and the Future of Abeokuta
Leadership became a central concern in the post 1918 environment. When Alake Gbadebo I died in 1920, succession carried deep political significance. The question was not only who would rule, but what kind of leadership could protect Egba interests under colonial rule.
Ladapo Ademola II emerged as Alake in 1920. He was widely viewed as a ruler capable of engaging colonial authorities while maintaining a connection to Egba traditions. His accession reflected hopes among many reform minded voices that leadership could combine negotiation, administrative competence, and cultural legitimacy.
At the same time, the limits of this arrangement were clear. Even a capable ruler operated within a colonial system that retained ultimate authority. This tension between expectation and reality remained a defining feature of Abeokuta’s political life.
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The Civic World That Shaped a Generation
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti grew up in a town where politics was not distant or abstract. Abeokuta discussed taxation, authority, coercion, leadership, and justice openly. The memory of resistance and the experience of colonial control remained active in public life.
These conditions formed the civic environment from which later movements emerged. The women led protests against taxation and administrative abuses that Funmilayo would later help lead did not arise suddenly. They were rooted in a longer tradition of organised dissent, political argument, and collective action that defined Abeokuta across generations.
Author’s Note
Abeokuta’s experience in the years surrounding the 1918 uprising reveals how communities learn politics through pressure, conflict, and negotiation, because the struggles over authority, leadership, and dignity did not end with suppression, they reshaped civic life and taught a generation that justice could be demanded collectively, a lesson that would later echo through the voices of women, workers, and reformers who refused silence.
References
Cheryl Johnson Odim and Nina Emma Mba, For Women and the Nation, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti of Nigeria, University of Illinois Press.
Toyin Falola, The Political Economy of a Pre Colonial African State, Ibadan 1830 to 1900, University of Ife Press.
I. A. Akinjogbin, War and Peace in Yorubaland 1793 to 1893, Heinemann.
