Onyeka Onwenu, the renowned singer, actor, broadcaster, and activist, known for her love ballads and empowering songs about women’s rights, passed away at 72. Affectionately dubbed the “Elegant Stallion,” Onwenu’s music provided solace during Nigeria’s tumultuous 1980s.
On Tuesday night in Lagos, after finishing a performance at a private party, Onwenu suddenly became ill. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she later died from a heart attack, as reported by local sources.
Among those who paid tribute to Onwenu was Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who remarked that she “lives on in her immortal masterpieces.”
Onwenu’s most famous work includes the disco anthem “One Love” (1986). Another hit, “You and I,” became iconic as it was repurposed for the 1999 movie “Conspiracy,” a film in which she also starred. This song is widely regarded as one of Nollywood’s most memorable soundtracks.
Born in January 1952 in Obosi, Anambra, to Dickson Onwenu, a pre-independence politician, and Hope Onwenu, a singer, she grew up in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Her education took her to the United States, where she attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts and the New School in New York.
Upon returning to Nigeria, Onwenu launched her pop career while also working as a broadcaster for the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). There, she wrote and narrated the 1984 documentary “Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches,” a collaboration between the BBC and NTA that highlighted corruption in the oil-rich nation.
A contemporary of jùjú music maestro King Sunny Adé, Onwenu recorded the 1989 duet “Choices” with him, addressing themes of consent and birth control—a bold statement in Nigeria’s conservative society. She was also a peer of the radical musician-activist Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì. When Kútì was arrested by the military government in 1984, Onwenu advocated for his release. In her 2021 memoir “My Father’s Daughter,” she revealed that Kútì proposed to her after his release, but she declined, humorously noting that she was too jealous to be part of his harem.
Transitioning to gospel music in the 1990s, Onwenu released four albums and received national honors from Nigeria in 2003 and 2011. Her self-confidence was often misinterpreted as arrogance.
Historian and lawyer Ed Keazor, who knew Onwenu for over two decades and represented her in the mid-1990s, noted that she was often described as a tough person. “She was even harder on herself, pushing herself and expecting the same from others,” he said. “She was more than a client; she was my big sister and heroine.”
Onwenu kept her personal life private. She is survived by two sons from her marriage in 1984, which she ended due to constant depression. “I raised my children alone, from kindergarten to master’s degree,” she once shared with the press.
One notable example of her tenacity was a three-day hunger strike at the NTA premises in July 2000. According to the BBC, she protested being barred from the station after complaining that the national channel played her music without paying the royalties owed to her.
In her later years, Onwenu entered politics, serving three years as the head of the National Centre for Women Development before refocusing on the arts. In 2013, British-Nigerian filmmaker Biyi Bandele cast her as the grandmother to the twins Olanna and Kainene in the film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Half of a Yellow Sun.” She also starred in “Lionheart,” Nigeria’s first Netflix original, alongside Nkem Owoh, her co-star in “Conspiracy.
Source: uk.news.yahoo.com
