Women Academics From Nigeria

"My mother trained us the children in the act of buying and selling. She started with clothes. She exposed us to the nitty-gritty of trade. She told me the importance of being a trader as early as when I was nine. My brother-in-law, brought me into commerce by getting me the distributorship of so many breweries and cement companies."

"No. My parents were disciplinarians. If my father asked any of us to recite any verse of the Bible and he or she fumbled, he or she got spanked. Again, any of us could be asked to handle the morning devotion and such a person should not mess up or else… There was a cable nearby to beat sense into your brain. We were well trained, most especially in the fear of God."

"Yes, I travelled to England. I attended the St. Nicholas Teacher Training College, to train and at the end of the third year, I graduated with a First class diploma. I really loved the training I got."

"None at all. We were close to 30 Nigerians who went for that training. Blacks and the whites co-existed in a convivial environment. We were treated like human beings."

"I got into trouble each time I took my mother’s clothes and wore them for a photo shoot. I would have poured perfumes on the clothes and my mother would get to know. She would then report me to my father, who would use cable to beat me. You know my father worked with the ECN and he did about two years with the National Electric Power Authority before he retired, so he had cables to beat anyone of us that misbehaved."

"I attended St. James’s African Church School, Idi Ape, Abeokuta between 1957 and 1962. Before that time, my father enrolled his children in a kindergarten school founded by a Sierra Leonean woman who we called Mama Saro. All she taught us were bible verses and we crammed them."

"She never used the cane, but she had another way of doing this. Her countenance when anyone misbehaved was more potent than the cane. Once her countenance changed, one got the message."

"I was not troublesome but I stood for my right and asked for it. No other student could cheat me and I never gave anyone the chance to cheat. No one could take me for granted."

"I think those South Africans doing that are crazy. They have forgotten so soon what Nigeria did to help them fight the apartheid regime to a standstill. Nigeria spearheaded the boycott of the 1983 Commonwealth Games because of apartheid. The United Kingdom which was then hosting incurred losses due to the boycott, because so many other countries joined Nigeria in boycotting the games."

"I was not born with any silver spoon. My father, late Pa Emmanuel Abiona Jiboku alias Jiboku Tannatanna was an electrical technician with the old Electric Company of Nigeria for 42 years. And my mother, late Ruth Olabisi Aina Jiboku(nee Aderupoko- Coker) of the famous Itesi area of Abeokuta was a trader."

"There was nothing peculiar about my birth, at least as far as I know."

"It is a divine call. I could still remember that very day at the Green Park in London. I sat there and was enjoying the scenery – the lake, the ducks and the serene atmosphere. Suddenly, I saw some children walked into the park and they were chatting. Something struck a cord in me that I wanted to start something where I could mould the lives of youths. That was when I decided to attend the teacher training college. I went there and graduated with first class."

"It is true. It was given to him in 1957 by the Queen of England. It was a solid sterling silver, which I inherited. The day I was given the MFR title in 2004 by former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, I wore the MBE medal."

"It is true. While I was in the secondary, I was a member of the school’s drama and cultural group. I was good at acting and mimicking others. But that divine call changed everything. But I have no regrets at all."

"I don’t believe that. No one can even pay enough for what we do as teachers. No amount of money can pay for our sacrifice. Teaching is like a calling, you must be trained for it and you must have passion for it."

"The instruments also include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and a host of others."

"Despite all these and the entrenchment of human rights in the constitution, Nigeria leads when it comes to denying women of equality, justice and opportunities."

"These instruments are from bodies such as Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), Convention on Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)."

"Nigeria is part of UDHR of 1948 which states that all humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights regardless of gender, national or social origin and property."

"The principle of equality and non-discrimination which Nigeria recognises and claims to uphold are a combination of both international and regional human rights instruments."

"human trafficking is adding shame to humanity."

"In recognition of your efforts in advancing this mandate, the Steering Committee of the awards gala have selected you as a finalist in the category for Civil Society."

"The award is convened in partnership with the British High Commission, the European Union, delegation and the Embassies of France, Germany, and the United States of America."

"Feminism is misconceived. It is about placing equal value on both gender; if you have a girl child, you value the girl child as you value your boy child. You don’t bring in the preference ideology. You give equal opportunities educationally and otherwise; you don’t say you go and cook because she is a girl; you train them equally as humans with equal right."

"UNN, said “in fact, the way they did it, I didn’t even know that I won. I was just invited and was announced the winner at the event."

"I am not saying men are not victims of sexual violence, men are trafficked too, but women and girls are disproportionately affected. This is because of their already weak position in the society and family. The prevailing social norms, patriarchal structures, the power relations, the dichotomy between public and private space; if you look at all these, you will see they are the ones in worse positions. When you want to help, you start with helping the most oppressed. The idea and the ideal is that nobody should suffer any violence or human right violation, but then you have to start from the ones that are least protected or most vulnerable."

"I think it is a very big thing which should be captured in our media reports because it has not been reported in any media platform."

"But the point of Hijarbie is not only to show how beautiful and trendy modest style can be,it's also about showing girls who may wear a hijab themselves that they are no less beautiful or special than Barbie herself."

"I think the most important thing to have as a Muslim or a non-Muslim is a very good character.The hijab is actually more about modesty than fashion but who says you can’t incorporate both together? Fashion with faith."

"The way Barbie dresses is very skimpy and different and there’s nothing wrong with it. I just wanted to give another option for Muslim girls like me"

"It is really important to have a good heart and I try to check my heart all the time just to make sure I am being good and not forget that, as it is really close and tied to my religion"

"We can say all we want about a woman's place or role in any given society but I really just wish it was something that can be implemented. In Islam, the true place of women comes from a place of strength, respect and a higher status, as I am sure it is for Nigeria and in the arts too—we have so many examples to support this but it is still upsetting when we conveniently forget all these because we do not want to shake the table."

"Barbie has created a new phenomenon, celebrating femininity, independence and female power"

"I want Hijarbie to inspire the Muslim girl child. It's about having a doll that looks like her, that represents her own cultural and religious background."

"For me to be a creative writer? That is not my calling. I write only history books because that is my calling."

"It goes back to childhood. My father like I said earlier, he’s just a wonderful dad to me. When I was growing up, I didn’t know he was famous, but I could count on my father. Anytime I needed him, he was always there for me. He is a very present father. When I was little, he was the one who would wake me up at nights, take me to the bathroom so that I don’t wet the bed."

"It is the worst abomination. That is the strategy women used to punish the colonial government during the Women’s War of 1929. They also used nudity as protest. We know from the colonial document that at a particular point when soldiers were trying to open fire on women, women lifted their skirts and the soldiers dropped their guns because you could not view the nakedness of your own mother and survive."

"So, nudity at protest is an abomination. That is the way women have evolved strategies on the pre-colonial period, through the colonial period and after colonialism."

"But if you look back to the pre-colonial period, women were very active. It is something that slowly we have to come out of . We have not gotten there yet."

"If you see all these, you know that it is a sign of a war to come. Then they would move to the offender’s house, matching like soldiers. When they get there, they would pull the offender out (which is the man), strip him naked and sit on him naked. And they take turn in this symbolic sitting on him which is what we call nudity as protest. The man is now naked with the women holding him down, and the women lifting up their skirt and sitting on him, planting their nakedness on every part of his body. A man who is punished that way stands humiliated in the eyes of the community. Some men will enjoy that…"

"None ever did and in fact, I haven’t seen it in my life time, but my father talked about this, telling a story about a man who committed suicide after this thing happened to him."

"Women generally have lost a lot of powers during the colonial period. You find out that what the British system did during the colonial period was to introduce a male-central system that pushed women to the background."

"Women were no longer involved in day-to-day decision making of the society. That is one thing I believe women have not really recovered from, where you are not finding women in the political governance of the society."

"So, the Igbo believe in a very egalitarian system where no one is superior to the other but it is leadership in the group. So, where women express power in Igbolandis in the group, Otu Umu Ada. They are the group of daughters and one of the strongest and powerful groups of women and it is a political organisation."

"In fact, the men don’t have Supreme Court of arbitration. What we have is supreme court of Umu Ada. So, if men have an issue in Igbo land, they can go to their lower courts, if not , they must appeal to the women in the Otu Umu Ada court. The women in Igbo land collectively have a lot of power. That is why we begin to talk about the Women War in 1929. It was not a riot; it was a war by women. It was the colonial government that called it a riot."

"Sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction that Igbo women have when they want to punish a man. For example: if a man continues to ill-treat a woman, the women groups Otu Umu Ada, Otu Ndi ama Ala, the title societies, the market women, the woman can go to one of these groups to report him and there, they will decide which punishment to mete out on him. They can decide to boycott their matrimonial duties or sit on the man. In one village, the women asked the men to clear the path to a stream and the men refused. The women got together and declared a boycott. They boycotted cooking, so, men could not eat for few days. They went to their mothers’ houses and their mothers told them they were not cooking, the same with their wives. Again, sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction; it only happened if other sanctions have failed."

"In Igboland, there is a proverb that says: Igbo enwe eze which means Igbo have no king. We do not believe in kings. If you want to be a king, you can be in your mother’s backyard; don’t think you can lord it over us."

"I have written and published two books, the first: Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings published by Heinmann ; the second book is called the Female King of Colonial Nigeria and other numerous journals and articles and chapters but my area is women history."

"If the aggrieved woman let out a cry of grievance, once women hear it, they know that things are not good. All women will then gather, dress in war gear. They smear their bodies with ashes and cover their bodies with palm fronds."

"It has everything to do with the nature of the culture. The areas you talked about are centralised societies which also have centralised structures that allow individuals to rise. In Igboland, we have egalitarian society; it is not a centralised society."