Overview
Margaret Ekpo was a women's rights organiser and one of the first women elected to a Nigerian legislature. She was Efik, born at Creek Town near Calabar in what is now Cross River State.
Biography
Ekpo trained as a teacher and later studied domestic science in Ireland. Living in Aba with her husband, a doctor, she moved into politics through the market women's associations of the town, organising the Aba Township Women's Association and using market meetings as a base for political mobilisation.
She joined the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, campaigned for women's voting rights in the east, and supported the women who protested at Aba and Opobo over trade and taxation. In 1961 she was elected to the Eastern House of Assembly, where she served until the collapse of the First Republic, working on market infrastructure, transport and the position of women in trade. She later lived quietly in Calabar. Working alongside Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti in the wider women's movement, she helped make women's associations a permanent part of Nigerian political life.
Notable achievements
- Organised the Aba Township Women's Association and mobilised market women politically
- Campaigned for women's suffrage in the Eastern Region
- Elected to the Eastern House of Assembly in 1961
- Calabar's airport is named after her
Legacy
Ekpo is remembered as one of the women who forced questions of suffrage and trade into the nationalist agenda, and as evidence that market associations were a serious political force rather than a social one.