The Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU), founded by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Eniola Soyinka (mother of Wole Soyinka) in 1946, organised the Egba market women against the flat-rate water tax and produce tax collected by the Sole Native Authority of the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Sir Ladapo Ademola II. The taxes — flat-rated, regressive, collected with humiliating physical inspections of women's bodies for hidden coins — sat on top of the wartime price controls administered by the Marketing Boards through Egba intermediaries.
From October 1947 the AWU staged continuous vigils of up to 10,000 women at Ake Palace, Abeokuta. The women slept in the palace grounds, prepared meals in communal kitchens, sang satirical songs, and refused to disperse for periods of up to 48 hours. The colonial Resident, A.F.B. Bridges, and the District Officer, who had backed the Alake's tax regime, found themselves unable to break the protest without firing on a peaceful, ritually-correct gathering of market women in the heart of Yorubaland — politically impossible in the wake of Aba.
On 3 January 1949 Oba Ademola II abdicated and went into exile at Oshogbo. The female tax was abolished, the Sole Native Authority restructured into the four-member Egba Interim Council (with one female seat for Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti), and the AWU expanded into the Nigerian Women's Union and then the Federation of Nigerian Women's Societies (1953), affiliating with the NCNC. It is one of very few documented Nigerian episodes in which a powerful traditional ruler stepped down primarily because of organised non-violent popular pressure, and the only major women's mobilisation of the colonial era that ended in complete victory without bloodshed. Ademola II was returned to the throne in 1950 after the Egba United Government petitioned for his reinstatement.