Nina Mba

Chief Nina Emma Mba (29 April 1944 – 14 January 2002) was a Nigerian-Australian author, academic historian and editor. Based in Nigeria for most of her career, she taught at the University of Lagos, was a member of the Historical Society of Nigeria and a founding member of the Women's Research and Documentation Center at the University of Ibadan. Her 1982 work Nigerian women mobilized was the first book to be written on the role of Nigerian women in politics.





== Biography ==

Mba was born in Sydney, Australia as Nina Emma Gantman to a Russian-Jewish father, Joseph Gantman, and a New Zealand mother, Dorothy. Her father was born in Minsk, and he moved with his family to Germany during the Russian Revolution of 1917. From there he escaped the holocaust by moving to Australia. Nina was one of three children and is survived by her younger sister, Naomi Linda Wickens (nee Gantman), and the youngest of the three, her brother David Evsor Gantman.

She met her husband at a university in Australia and the couple soon left Australia for Nigeria in 1966. She completed a PhD in History at the University of Ibadan and her thesis was later published in 1982. She joined the History Department of University of Lagos where she was a participator and writer in the field of women's history and studies.