‘You have so many outstanding qualities. You are a very warm, kind, generous, person – one of the kindest we’ve ever met, and certainly one of the most interesting. I do hope politics never hardens you. Please keep your gift of what in political terms can be described as ‘soft power’. That is your strength. Thank you for coming to see us tonight’
That was the heartfelt tribute given by Past President Mike Fox, to this week’s speaker, Councillor Abigail Marshall Katung, 130th person to hold the Office of Lord Mayor of Leeds, and our first African Lord Mayor. She is such a cheerful person, entirely lacking in pomposity in spite of her honourable office, that I feel able to refer to the Lord Mayor here simply as Abigail.
Abigail was born in Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria. She graduated from university in Zaria but then took her father’s advice to pursue further education in the West. Luckily for us, Abigail chose Leeds University where she took a master’s degree in politics and international studies in 2000. On graduating, she phoned her mother and simply said ‘I love it here and I’m not returning’. She has stayed here ever since, marrying and giving birth to twin boys, then being elected to the Council in 2019 and becoming Lord Mayor in 2024 at the age of 48.
Abigail told us she wanted to speak about her career in athletics, and then to say something about her Lord Mayor’s chosen charity.
First athletics. She discovered at the age of 9 that she was really good at sprinting. She competed at State level and later ran for the university. She could run 100 metres in 11.93 seconds. At the age of 18, her father, whom she revered, said to her ‘Abi, you need to stop running. You’re a fast girl and if you continue being so boyish and boisterous, no one will want to marry you. I now want you to grow up to be a lady.’ She told us that she wanted to please her dad so she did everything he asked. ‘I stopped running to be a lady, I went to elocution school, to learn how to wear heels, to sit down like a lady, all that stuff. Dad was pleased.’
Abigail told us that her father died at the cruelly young age of 50 when she herself was 22. She then felt able to resume running, and joined Leeds Athletics Club where she threw herself into sprinting, no longer at the elite level but able to compete and run for the club. She can still run 100 metres in 14 seconds. She encouraged her boys to run competitively, telling us that growing up in a developing country like Nigeria, athletics and sport were all about winning. In England it was participation. She told her kids ‘listen boys, you must win. Just participating is a joke. Don’t come home and tell mum you came third or fourth. You must be one or two.’ Fortunately for the twins, they did well in sport at school. They had a fierce mentor. Abigail took the annual parents’ race very seriously. ‘No mother ever beat me in the parents’ race, throughout the boys’ school career’.
Abigail got so much fulfilment from athletics that she wanted to give back. She trained as an athletics coach, specialising in the 100 and 200 metres, coaching the 8 to 15 year olds. Although she had to take a year’s break to be Lord Mayor, she intends to return to coaching in May. She spoke with great enthusiasm, saying ‘Coaching young people how to sprint has been the love of my life. The thing about sport is it teaches you discipline, all about timing, strength, agility, resilience and of course, how to win. In training, for the first hour I sit on the grass with my young ones, and chat like they’re my children. That’s the best time in training. They tell me a lot of stuff they wouldn’t tell their parents. It really helps. If children are bullied, when they come out onto the tracks, it helps with their confidence when they go back into class. And it keeps them out of trouble’.
Her boys are now in their final year at university: to Abigail’s dismay after all those years of sprinting, they have got into American football. But, she says, they stay fit and out of trouble, competing at weekends.
Asked about injuries, Abigail told us she has a thigh injury which is troublesome but does not stop her. She learned how to train through the pain. Asked about the controversy over trans athletes she was equally robust, saying that a person born a man will always have an advantage over a woman.
Abigail then turned to her role as Lord Mayor, where she represents the entire city. Leeds is a very multicultural city with 179 nations represented. The highlight of her year in office was hosting a celebration of International Cultural Day in November 2024 in a church hall in Burmantofts. Her ambition was to see people of all races and religions and creeds come together to celebrate community cohesion. She got 900 people in the room, ‘Indians, Caribbeans, Nigerians, Irish girls aged 7 dancing – I wished I could have taken them all home to be my daughters – All under one roof showing off their culture: their food, their dress, their language, the singing. It was beautiful.’
Abigail turned to the Lord Mayor’s charity, the Leeds Community Foundation. The pandemic has amplified inequalities in the city. She chose the Foundation because its aim is to address inequality in order to create a fairer Leeds. It is a funding body, working with different charities across the city where their focal points are food poverty, health inequalities including mental health in young people, as well as sporting inequality. She told us it is there ‘to spread the love, making sure that everyone in the city feels special, to help the lives of those not so privileged as ourselves.’
We were pleased to make a donation, and delighted to spend the evening in the Lord Mayor’s company.
For more about the Lord Mayor, visit
www.leeds.gov.uk/councillors-and-democracy/lord-mayor