Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Hajia Gambo Sawaba
1933 – 2001
Imprisoned sixteen times for opposing child marriage
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
She was jailed sixteen times for campaigning against child marriage, forced labour and the exclusion of girls from school in northern Nigeria.
Hajaratu Abubakar Gambo was born in Zaria to a Nupe father and a mother from Ghana, orphaned young, and married at thirteen — which is the fact behind everything she did afterwards. Widowed at seventeen, she refused to be married off again.
She joined the Northern Elements Progressive Union under Aminu Kano and became its women's leader, and then the deputy national chair of the party — organising women in a region where the emirate establishment, the colonial administration and most of her own society agreed that women had no business in politics at all.
What she campaigned on was concrete: an end to the marriage of girls, an end to forced labour, the right of girls to attend school, and the right of northern women to vote, which they did not get until 1976. She addressed public meetings where doing so was treated as an outrage, and was beaten, shaved, publicly humiliated, and imprisoned sixteen separate times across three decades — by the colonial authorities, by the regional government, and after independence. She was at one point sentenced to be thrown from a height, a sentence that was not carried out.
The name Sawaba was given to her by supporters; it means redemption. She continued in politics into the Second Republic and died in 2001, and is the reference point for every argument about women's political participation in northern Nigeria.
She joined the Northern Elements Progressive Union under Aminu Kano and became its women's leader, and then the deputy national chair of the party — organising women in a region where the emirate establishment, the colonial administration and most of her own society agreed that women had no business in politics at all.
What she campaigned on was concrete: an end to the marriage of girls, an end to forced labour, the right of girls to attend school, and the right of northern women to vote, which they did not get until 1976. She addressed public meetings where doing so was treated as an outrage, and was beaten, shaved, publicly humiliated, and imprisoned sixteen separate times across three decades — by the colonial authorities, by the regional government, and after independence. She was at one point sentenced to be thrown from a height, a sentence that was not carried out.
The name Sawaba was given to her by supporters; it means redemption. She continued in politics into the Second Republic and died in 2001, and is the reference point for every argument about women's political participation in northern Nigeria.
Spotted something wrong? Tell us and we will check it.