Matriarch of High Society: TitiAtiku at 75

Some women sit beside power. AminaTitilayoAtiku-Abubakar, now 75, helped reshape its contours.

Born in colonial Ilesha and raised in Lagos, Madam Titi was never just the vice president’s wife. She was, instead, a quiet storm. Long before “gender mainstreaming” made the development lexicon, she was on the frontlines: lecturing, legislating, and, eventually, legislating against legacies of silence.

She met AtikuAbubakar in the boldest of circumstances. Two young hearts, defying tradition, eloped with only two friends in attendance. Fifty-plus years later, the former vice president would recall it with tenderness: “I couldn’t have married a better wife,” he said. That private rebellion became the seed of a very public legacy.

As Second Lady from 1999 to 2007, Madam Titi founded Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) after witnessing Nigerian girls being trafficked across Europe. Her advocacy led to the establishment of NAPTIP, the federal agency now at the heart of Nigeria’s fight against human trafficking.

Yet she never lost the intimacy of mission. She authored books, taught at Kaduna Polytechnic, and welcomed repatriated girls with dignity rather than pity. In a political culture more inclined toward first-lady fashion diplomacy, she insisted on institutions.

Even now, Madam Titi holds court in high society, not as an ornament, but as the original blueprint. Fluent in Yoruba, Hausa, and policy, she remains a woman who sees bridges where others see borders: between faiths, between North and South, between tradition and transformation.

So, as the matriarch turns 75, the nation raises more than a toast. It pauses, perhaps, to ask how many lives were altered by the quiet force who once walked Rome’s streets, saw suffering, and came home to change the law.

Because legacy, like elegance, is rarely loud but always lasting.