Details are slowly emerging about the events leading to the death of renowned singer, actress, and journalist Onyeka Onwenu, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 72.
Reports say she died on Tuesday evening in Lagos after performing at the 80th birthday celebration of her friend, Stella Okoli, the founder of Emzor Pharmaceuticals.
Onwenu reportedly slumped, was taken to the hospital where she succumbed to death.
Her legacy as a talented artist and dedicated social activist will be deeply missed, critics say.
According to records, after she slumped, she was rushed to the Reddington Hospital, where she was confirmed dead.
Dubbed the ‘Elegant Stallion’ by the Nigerian Press in her heyday, the singer was born on January 31, 1952.
She was, in 2013, appointed the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the National Centre for Women Development by the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
In her 2020 memoir, the singer and actress revealed, for the first time, that she got married to a Yoruba Muslim in 1984 and the union produced two sons named Tijani Ogunlende and Ibrahim Ogunlende. Ibrahim later changed his name to Abraham.
Onwenu, who had kept her marital life private up until then, made the revelation in her memoir titled My Father’s Daughter.
In the autobiography, the then 68-year-old movie star revealed how she fell in love decades ago and how the union produced her two sons — Tijani and Ibrahim.
“I married a Yoruba Muslim in 1984. In this book, I am, perhaps for the very first time, setting the records straight with respect to my connubial relationship.
“Yes, I was married. I married a man I fell in love with in 1984. We have two children: Tijani and Ibrahim. (Ibrahim later changed the first letter of his name from I to A, and thus became Abraham.) My husband is Yoruba, and was a Muslim when we met,” she wrote in the memoir.
The autobiography also documents her life as a musician, activist, wife, mother, and politician as well as her formative contact with feminism.
The author shared how the civil war — from 1967 to 1970 — affected her life and her family.
She also documented her years in America, the conflicts that were the products of being a migrant, her experience with workplace sexual harassment, and her decision to quit her job at the United Nations.
“On the marriage front, she explored the challenges women face and how she refused to shrink herself to accommodate her husband’s insecurities about her fame.
“It’s a memoir young persons must read. Women, especially, will glean numerous lessons from her life experience since successful women in Nigeria rarely share their story in a candid manner,” Expand Press Limited, her publishers, said while describing the book.
