Madam Tinubu

Who was Madam Tinubu?

Madam Efunroye Tinubu was an active adversary of the British Colonial Government of what is now Nigeria that was banished by it from Lagos to her native Abeokuta. She was a former slave trader who, having realised the relative differences between domestic slaving and the inhumane treatment of slaves in Europe and the Americas, became an active opponent to all slave trading.

She became the first Iyalode of the Egba clan and was able to build a small financial empire through trading in arms and salt. She is considered an important figure in West African history due to her political significance as a powerful female aristocrat of feudal Nigeria. She died in 1887.

Tinubu Square on Lagos Island, a place previously known as Independence Square, is named after the late Oloye. Ita Tinubu had been known by that name long before the country's independence, but it was renamed Independence Square by the leaders of the First Republic who failed to recognise the importance of this venerable lady amongst the indigenous Yoruba people of Lagos or, perhaps, as a punitive measure to exert federal might over Lagos Yoruba heroes and heroines.