Bola Ahmed Tinubu has become a very popular figure in the face of Nigerian politics since he has accomplished a lot in his years in office as the governor of Lagos State.
Bola Tinubu who is now the president of Nigeria has been a key player in the formation and growth of the All Progressive Congress (APC), a well-known political party in Nigeria.
But many Nigerians have a lot of questions about this politician, and one of such questions is whether Bola Tinubu is related to Efunroye Tinubu.
Who is Efunroye Tinubu?
Efunroye Tinubu was a powerful woman who is considered to be the first Nigerian woman to buy a car, she was also a merchant, and slave trader in pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria.
She was born in the year 1805 in the Ojokodo forest area of Egbaland and is also attributed as the first lyalode of the Egba clan.
Efunroye Tinubu was married to four different men in her lifetime and most were influential people in the society. Her first marriage was to a local man and they had two sons before her husband died after the family migrated to the town of Abeokuta in 1830.
She met Prince Adele, an exiled Oba of Lagos in 1833 while he toured Abeokuta on a goodwill visit and they two got married.
Prince Adele and Efunroye moved to Agbadarigi in Lagos, where she lost her two sons to malaria. In 1835, her husband Adele returned to the throne with Efunroye Tinubu as his queen, but he died two years later.
Her marriage to the Prince did not bear any children, but she helped install Adele’s son, Oluwole as the new king and married his war captain, Obadina.
She had her fourth marriage with Momoh Bukar, an Arabic scholar. But their marriage didn’t bear children instead Momoh’s children from other wives later adopted the Tinubu name. She died in 1887 as an important figure in 19th century Nigeria.
Is Bola Tinubu Related to Efunroye Tinubu?
No, Bola Tinubu is not related to Efunroye Tinubu. Tinubu is an indigenous Lagos family name that traces back to now Borno State, according to Lagos historians.
According to historians of Lagos, the patriarch of the Tinubu family, was Momoh Bukar a Kanuri man also alternately called Momoh Abubakar, or Alfa Ibunu.
He migrated from the Bornu Empire to Lagos in the 1800s where he met and got married to Efunroye Tinubu. Their union didn’t bear any children, but Bukar had children with other women and they adopted Tinubu as their family.
At this point, you now know that Bola Tinubu is not related to the popular Efunroye Tinubu.
Ojibe Izuchukwu is a Nigerian student with a passion for media reporting and content writing.
