Legendary Nigerian poet, broadcaster and playwright Mabel Segun passed away in Nigeria on Thursday, March 6, 2025.
Mabel Segun, who was born in Ondo City, Nigeria on February 13, 1930, attended the University of Ibadan graduating in 1953 with a BA degree in English, Latin and History. She taught these subjects in Nigerian schools, and later became Head of the Department of English and Social Studies and Vice-Principal at the National Technical Teachers’ College, Yaba (now Yaba College of Technology).
She was a broadcaster of note in the West African nation, winning the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation 1977 Artiste of the Year award.
She was a writer who 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.
Her full list of books were My Father’s Daughter (1965), Under the Mango Tree (co-edited) (1979), Youth Day Parade (1984), Olu and the Broken Statue (1985), Sorry, No Vacancy (1985), Conflict and Other Poems (1986), 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 died on March 6, 2025, at the age of 95.
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