“Her voice always had a delicious eloquence to it, carrying the same mellifluous cadence whether she conversed, or sang, or did a voice-over.”
The evening’s excitement was building up to a crescendo when Onyeka was called to sing.
Before she sang, she spoke of how much she loved and admired the lady everyone was here to celebrate.
Don’t be beguiled by her beauty and her soft voice, she said mischievously, cradling the microphone and looking in the direction of Stella Okoli, who was eighty years old today, sitting resplendent in a shimmering white gown that overflowed around her ankles.
Under the soft veneer, Stella, her role model, was as hard as nails, Onyeka disclosed.
She reeled off a list of the ladies she admired with that precise combination. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Chimamanda. Erelu Abiola Dosunmu.
Over the years, Onyeka had made no secret of her passionate support for strong assertive womanhood, especially when it was accompanied by great accomplishment that was often despite, and not because of, the men in their lives. She admired Winnie Mandela, the indomitable symbol of the struggle through the years of her husband Nelson’s incarceration on Robben Island. When Nelson decided to put Winnie away shortly after his return, her disappointment with him and her solidarity with her were total.
Onyeka Onwenu, songstress, actress, journalist, saw herself in the mould of the strong women she admired. She endeavoured to live the part.
‘I don’t give a damn’ she said in a revealing television interview she held with tele-anchor Chude, which has now become an archival treasure for people searching the records for the true Onyeka.
Her voice always had a delicious eloquence to it, carrying the same mellifluous cadence whether she conversed, or sang, or did a voice-over.
She began to sing. Many in the audience knew the words of most of her songs, and they sang along with her.
It struck your mind, as you watched her prancing about the stage, looking younger and more energetic than her seventy-plus years, that you were often in the same space, but had seldom spoken. She was a regular face at Stella’s annual Night of Carols in Parkview, which for a certain circle had become the true precursor to Christmas Day in the city of Lagos. Sometimes she sang. Sometimes she just sat in the audience with the rest.
When Onyeka sang, as she was doing now amidst all the glitz and glamour, you could not escape the sense that she was singing about herself, and about her life. There was joie de vivre that was infectious. There was angst, too.
She has had a hard time with it. But at every point, she gave as good as she got. And she was still standing and singing.
The beautiful, young, multi-talented fresh-faced creative who shared a flat with her friend Tyna Onwudiwe in Surulere long ago seemed to have all the possibilities of the world at her feet. But she had already seen tragedy, even then. Her father, who adored her and was a massive influence in her life, died in a road traffic accident when she was four years old, a week before he was due to be named as Minister for Education.
The girl from Arondizuogu had the best of education, attending Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and later obtaining a Master’s degree in media studies in New York before returning to Nigeria in 1980 to serve her NYSC year at the Nigerian Television Authority, Lagos.
The faces in the party audience glowed with delight as Onyeka went from song to song. Recognisable faces. The Ogbeni Oja of Ijebuland. The Erelu of Lagos. The wife of the Deputy Governor of Lagos. The Governor of Abia. Celebrity actress Joke Silva, resplendent in a long gown. Peter Obi.
She was not about to sing ‘Iyogogo’ tonight, it seemed, but your mind kept going to its lyrics because of the picture it painted of Romance, Ambivalence and Pain.
‘…One minute you’re so happy… next minute you’re so sad…
…why don’t you stay…
…make up your mind so I know where I am…’
That the two grown men in her life, her children Tijani and Abraham Ogunlende were the products of a marriage gone awry was public knowledge. It took courage to marry across the East-West divide of Nigeria. It took courage to salvage her children from the ashes of that union, and maintain her composure.
In ‘A Squandering of Riches’ the BBC documentary that would cement her journalistic fame, shot on the eve of the coup that toppled the Shagari government in 1983, she addressed corruption and moral turpitude of an ailing Nigeria, but also, in her youthful vibrancy conveyed the limitless possibilities of a resurgent, dynamic Nigeria.
She went on to do other things. Politics. Films. A questionable stint facilitating music for dictator Sani Abacha’s inglorious ‘One thousand man march’.
A short and turbulent stint as Director General of the National Centre for Women Development.
She was not going to leave the stage this night without singing ‘One Love’ – her permanent signature tune, and the validation of who she was and what she stood for.
As she ploughed joyfully into the song, she descended from the stage and danced between the audience.
‘One love…Keep us together…’
Everyone was singing and dancing and clapping.
The applause was raucous when she returned to her table.
History became a blur from that juncture.
The MC’s announcement requesting for ‘Any Doctor in the House, please!’
The Ogbeni Oja, one of the nation’s preeminent physicians going over to tend to Onyeka, who had slumped. Defining the situation as an emergency, he ordered an evacuation. An ambulance, standing by, conveyed her to nearby Reddington Hospital.
The night wound to a close on a note of prayer and positive expectation, expressed by Chief Emeka Anyaokwu who supervised the cutting of the birthday cake, that his cousin’s daughter Onyeka would recover quickly under the ministration of the doctors.
It was the note on which you went to sleep that night.
But Nigeria’s ‘Elegant Stallion’ was gone.
May Onyeka Onwenu’s soul rest in perfect peace.
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