I first met Charry Ada Onwu-Otuyelu at the 2009 international convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in Minna, Niger State. It was an election year in ANA. Charry, who was then the national auditor of the association, was vying for the position of vice president.
I had gone to Minna with some members of the Imo State chapter of ANA, including the then chairman Gbenga Ajileye, the multiple award-winning writer Nnenna Ihebom, my very good friend and brother Chidozie Chukwubuike, the poet Chioma Shedrack Enwerem, and a couple of others whose names I cannot readily recall.
Charry was not on our entourage but had gone to Minna on her own from wherever. That notwithstanding, her first self-assigned task the moment she got to Shiroro Hotel, venue of the conference, on the opening day was to look for “my people” – and this meant not just those of us from Imo but also writers from other states of the South-East. We all threw our weight behind her. When the results were announced and it was clear her opponent had the upper hand, she took it in good faith.
Charry was a nurse by profession, having got her nursing professional qualifications from University Teaching Hospital Ibadan and Maternity Hospital Lagos. I was told she ran a clinic/maternity somewhere in Obinze, near Owerri, the Imo State capital. I would also learn from my friend Chukwubuike that she was also a civil war veteran, having served with the Biafran Armed Forces Medical Service during the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War (1967-70). But it was her writings that defined her essence, much like Cyprian Ekwensi and Anezi Okoro who, even though coming from the medical background, would become giants in the literary world.
One of the early female voices to take the genre of children literature very seriously, Charry Ada Onwu-Otuyelu ventured into creative literature in the early 1980s. Among her earliest works was ‘Ifeanyi and Obi’, which won the children literature award in 1988. She would go ahead in the course of her writing career to win several other literary awards with her outstanding works written for children.
Her keen interest in folktales and history defined the direction of her research, which mostly revolved around history and sociology. This also informed the themes of some of her works, which include ‘Catastrophe’, ‘Our Grannies Tales’, ‘Adobi’, ‘Triumph of Destiny’, ‘One Bad Turn’, ‘Ada Marries a Palm Tree’, ‘Amaigbo Kwenu: History of My Town’, ‘Good Morning Mr Kolanut’, among others.
A brief review of ‘Good Morning Mr Kolanut’ on DINFA, where Charry Ada Onwu is also listed, says it is a collection of people’s ideas and responses to the concept of kolanut.
“With a socio-cultural framing across different ethnicities in Nigeria, the book captures both scholarly and popular notions and contestations surrounding the planting, usage, and consumption of kolanut,” says the review.
“Of interest then is the fact that despite disparate cultural differences in Nigeria, many of Chief Onwu-Otuyelu’s interviewees concur on the idea of female exclusionism in this facet of Nigerian culture. It smacks of great irony then that Chief Ada Onwu-Otuyelu, a woman, is among the foremost researchers to investigate and document issues relating to kolanut,” it says.
DINFA, short for the Directory of Nigerian Female Authors, prides itself as “a celebration of the writings by Nigerian female authors whose literary contributions had helped to expand the ever-widening frontiers of African Literature in English and indigenous languages”.
Charry was one of the founding members of ANA and did everything within her powers to see to the growth of the association. Agbomma Kate on Facebook talks about how Charry advised her to join ANA when she saw the potential in her. “Your seasoned reasons beckoned and aroused the wordsmith in me,” Kate says in a tribute to Charry.
Chukwubuike, who later became the chairman of ANA Imo, also tells me that when ANA Imo was in crisis in the years preceding 2008, Charry was a stabilising force and was instrumental to the resolution of the issues.
In her book Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (Princeton University Press, 2000), Wendy Griswold acknowledges Charry Ada Onwu as one of the writers she met face to face and had interviews with in the course of researching for the book.
A cultural enthusiast, Charry Ada Onwu-Otuyelu was a professional dancer with the Imo State Council for Arts and Culture (ISCAC) in Owerri and later rose to become the first female director of the council. She was also a TV star, featuring in ‘Village Headmaster’, ‘Masquerade’ and ‘Igbo Plays’ on IBC TV and Radio, and also featured in famous films like Bisi Daughter of the River and Wole Soyinka’s Kongi’s Harvest. She was a senior fellow at Ebedi Writers Residency founded by Wale Okediran, a former national president of ANA.
In a statement in June shortly after her death, Wole Adedoyin, president, Society of Young Nigerian Writers (SYNW), described Charry Ada Onwu-Otuyelu as “a principled, dogged and unrelenting writer, fully committed to ANA’s cause and the development of children literature in Nigeria”.
“Her type is rare, her personal sacrifices and selfless services to ANA and children literature in Nigeria uncommon. She deserves everything that ANA can do to give her a befitting honour, to immortalize her name as one of the founding members of ANA,” Adedoyin said.
A native of Amaigbo, Nwangele Local Government Area of Imo State, Charry Ada Onwu was married to Olusoji Otuyelu and the marriage produced four children.
I last saw her in 2013 at the ANA convention in Akure, Ondo State. It was sad reading from Agbomma Kate that this noble woman who dedicated her life to the service of her fatherland actually struggled to get her backlog of unpaid pension from the Imo State government. That’s the irony of Nigeria, a country that eats up its vulnerable population.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
