OMO EKODA!!! MADAM ALIMOTU PELEWURA, IYALOJA OF LAGOS IN 1929 TO 1951.

Alimotu Pelewura Born in Lagos in 1881 and Died in 1951, Living at Oke-popo area Lagos lsland, Lagos. Monuments Pelewura Market on Adeniji Adele Road, to Remember her political Activist.
Alimotu Pelewura (1865-1951) was a Nigerian trader who was a leader of a Lagos-based market women in the anticolonial struggle and advocacy, she was a devolt muslim also a political ally of Herbert Macaulay.  The market women association of which Pelewura was the head was one of the most important women's organization in the Capital City of Lagos the most populated in Sub-saharan Africa, Nigeria.for more than half a century she led the Lagos market women Association during the colonial period. Madam Pelewura was born in Lagos to a large polygynous family, she was the elder of two children born by her biological mother. Her mother was a fish trader and Pelewura also chose fish trading as an occupation. By 1900, she had become an important market women leader and trader and in 1910 was given a title by Oba Eshugbayi Eleko. In the 1920s, she was leader of the Ereko meat market and with the support of Herbert Macaulay, she rose to become the leader of the formed Lagos Market Women Association. The Lagos Market Women's Association was founded in the 1920s by Pelewura and a few other market leaders. Pelewura, a fish trader was the alaga (head) of the Ereko market became the association's premier president. During her reign, its struggles against women's taxationand for women sufrage in 1930,s the organization had collected money to pay clerks to write letters on its behalf and to hire Lawyer to represent her in its struggles with the british run colonial government, in colonial government documents officials often lamented the extent of the power that pelewura and the market women wielded in controlling the economy and in political Affairs. On behalf of the Lagos market's women association, pelewura represented eighty-four market women's local organizations in market on the lLU COMMITTEE, a component of the traditional yoruba government of Lagos under the Oba of Lagos pelewura worked with several of the nationalist parties of the early twentienth cenetury, including the nigeria national Democratic party ( founded in 1923) and in 1938 the Nigeria union of young Democrats, on whose executive Committee she served once, Addressing a crowd at a political rally, she said, "l am she who is called pelewura we wonder why your women folk did not show up here today. Tell me that thing which men can undertake alone without the help of the women folk. Yoruba market traditional exercised a great deal of control over the market, decided on locations, fixing prices, providing for upkeep, and making loans to members women were not taxed as individuals, thought in the 1930's and 1940's the colonial government hatched several schemes to tax market women in Lagos and under pelewura's leadership the women resisted at a mass rally she excoriated the government on the grounds that it was taxing women with 50pounds without gaving them either the right to vote or polical representations, and she demanded female suffrange. During World War ll the Colonial government sought to control the pricing and selling of food. Pelewura led the wom  protested against imposed taxation and price controls of produce both incidents she believed will impact negatively on the livelihood of women. The government official attempted to bribe pelewura toger the women to accept Government control to market. She refused and accused him of seeking to break and starve the country of her birth.  After a period in which no recorded action took place, protests and action began in December. On 16 December 1940, the women closed the Lagos market and marched to the office of the Commissioner of the Colony. A local newspaper, the Daily Service, reported that around 10,000 women participated, while the government reported 100. Outside the Commissioner’s office, Pelewura and other leaders spoke out against the ordinance. They said that many of the women’s husbands were unemployed, making women the primary earners within households, and that “times were very hard.” The Commissioner asserted that only “well-to-do” women would be taxed, and claimed that men often transferred property to their wives to avoid taxation. The women, dissatisfied with the Commissioner’s response, then marched to the Government House, For solidarity and peace with intrest of market women in lagos. Madam Alimotu pelewura died in 1951 and twenty-five thousand people attended her burial. Her leadership is an example of strong indigenous in the antcolonial stronggle.
May Almighty Allah grant her janat fridaous