Eminent playwright, poet, broadcaster and sportswoman, Mabel Segun, celebrated her 90th birthday on Tuesday, February 18.
It was a lowkey celebration witnessed by close family, friends and select media at her residence in Lagos.
Born in Ondo Town, Mrs Segun attended the University of Ibadan, graduating in 1953 with a BA in English, Latin and History.
She is recorded as the first Nigerian woman to play table tennis and became an honorary male by entering men’s tournaments.
Affectionately referred to as The Honourable Gentleman, she is Nigeria’s first National Table Tennis Champion.
Her first published book, My Father’s Daughter (1965), has been widely used as a literature text in schools all over the world.
Her other books include Youth Day Parade (1984), Olu and the Broken Statue (1985), Sorry, No Vacancy (1985), My Mother’s Daughter (1986), Ping-Pong: Twenty-Five Years of Table Tennis (1989), The First Corn (1989), The Twins and the Tree Spirits (1990), The Surrender and Other Stories (1995), Readers’ Theatre: Twelve Plays for Young People (2006) and Rhapsody: A Celebration of Nigerian Cooking and Food Culture (2007).
Segun has championed children’s literature in Nigeria through the Children’s Literature Association of Nigeria, which she founded in 1978, and the Children’s Documentation and Research Centre, which she set up in 1990 in Ibadan.
She is also a fellow of the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany.
As a broadcaster, Segun won the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation 1977 Artiste of the Year award.
In 2009, she received the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award for lifetime achievements.
In 2007, Segun was named joint winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature.
She holds the National Honour of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR).
Other writers of her generation include Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chukwuemeka Ike and Elechi Amadi.
Achebe was her classmate at the University College Ibadan (now University of Ibadan).
Segun is the paternal grandmother to Yeni Kuti’s daughter, Rolari Jacka, who recently gave birth to her second child.
