A beautiful, touching tribute to Onyeka Onwenu by the one and only Uri Jones (a legit beauty queen,writer and human rights activist)🙏

A beautiful, touching tribute to Onyeka Onwenu by the one and only Uri Jones (a legit beauty queen,writer and human rights activist)🙏

A beautiful, touching tribute to Onyeka Onwenu by the one and only Uri Jones (a legit beauty queen,writer and human rights activist)🙏

‘🎶Onye ga agba egwu
,Iyaaa, ga agba egwu, Iya ,
Onye ga agba egwu?
Iyaaa ga agba egwu, Iya
Onye ga agba egwu,
Iyaaa, ga agba egwu Iya,
Onyeka ga agba egwu,
Iyaaa ga agba egwu… Iya!!!🎶

My siblings and I would sing at the top of our voices in our heavily crusted Igbo to entertain Onyeka Onwenu whenever she visited our home when we were kids.

We took it quite seriously ; more like my younger sister who was the bold extroverted type that took her role as the lead singer & dancer VERY SERIOUSLY, my brother would just beat or play whatever instrument he was.
I was the shy observer who just did pseudo-back up. (Promise! Loll) But was more enthralled awestruck by the beauty that she was, just there smiling, mumbling whatever it was and lost in wonder of the creation sat before me .

As a young girl my mum was the most beautiful woman ever and so you had to be extraordinary for you to captivate me with your beauty & essence as a woman. And there was this shining light, right there in our sitting room!!! I was star struck everytime. I thought my parents were gods for moves like this.loll

And aunty Onyeka would oblige us equally with the seriousness of our preparations to entertain her with her own songs, as our eager audience together with our amused parents. It would usually follow a LOT of laughter, hugs, kisses and applause with her chorusing melodiously to our massacred renditions of noise and pretending to be star struck herself

And though we’ve come a long way in the present & continuous struggle against inequality, Nigeria had little to no female role models for young girls like me then to look up to. If you didn’t have a strong working mother with feminist ideals at home to act as one, you were most likely headed to the route of mental misogynistic doom cushioned by partriarchy.

The most we were conditioned to as role models within Nigeria, were first ladies; wives of then military dictators.Women were seen to only aspire & reach such lofty curated heights of association by marriage and not by the successes of their own actions, talents, brilliance nor be heard by the importance of their opinions & decisions. We were occasionally regaled in school with often revisionist histories of heroic figures of the dead like Queen Amina, Madame Tinubu a slave trader & merchant…, and the benevolent acts by missionaries like Mary Slessor who abolished twins….

The role models like Funmilayo Ransome Kuti that should have been, were never portrayed to us as such, but rather if at all, as villians who suffered the consequences of their rebellious actions. It was worse when women were in the arts as stage performers, our cultures stereotyped women in such careers as “loose” . It was even worse if you were beautiful, educated, (VERY WELL for that matter from elite schools) from good stock, a noble home as even your family (depending on how far in the abysss of ultra-conservatism) too, may go as far as disowning you. So you had to be EXTRAORDINARY to not only dare to be a stage performer, but be a role model at the same time as a woman in Nigeria.

Onyeka Onwenu was one of the very sparse handful of women in the limelight and at the forefront of that extraordinariness in Nigeria at the epoch.

She was armed with her superior education : advanced degrees, her personality, her exposure, her audacity, her talent & her vision.

She was the ABSOLUTE epitome of CLASS!

Even when her voice bellowed notes like a nightingale, it was full of class. Pure class! There’s nothing she has sung in the past I couldn’t listen to today or tomorrow, TIMELESS!

It was beyond her beauty, it was her very essence. It was her. Eloquent, brilliant principled, versatile, sophisticated, liberated, Patriotic, Confident. She was tall in the way she carried & comported herself without airs, but with self awareness grounded with pride in her roots despite her western education & exposure. Her documentary for BBC extending her “trained journalist” side on Nigeria’s corruption, injustice & inequality still resonates today, saying a lot!!! Aunty Onyeka is the kind of woman intimidated insecure people found intimidating by no fault of hers, other than being.

I hadn’t seen her beyond the screens in the past decades, but nothing about her had been reduced or revised. She was STILL Onyeka. Even as she was increasing and diversifying her gifts, talents & scope, still grounded in the very foundation of the beckoning of her soul, which was music, her wings were only getting stronger.A stallion indeed! But she was more, a unicorn.

I was worried that politics would stain her integrity as it usually does in Nigeria, because the propensity to “stain your white” in Nigeria is HIGH!!! Either in the compromising of one’s character by self in corruption or the compromising of character by the company of corruption in mingling & environment. But she carried on fiercely, with a voice beyond singing, but a voice apeaking up for the rights of women, starting even with hers & justice.

The past month has been fraught with the passing of FANTASTIC women I personally know and been hard on me. I couldn’t find words plenty as they were inside of me and promised not to write eulogies as I do, because back to back was perplexing much for me.

No matter how much I think I have mastered death, it still find ways to shock me. Somehow I think hers, was as a result of negligence. I can’t help, but think if she got first aid quicker, if an ambulance had arrived 5mins earlier or just in time..but it was not meant to be. It is the consolation we give ourselves on this side of the pond when we suffer the obvuous consequences of poor governance & leadership. May be it is my own denial that she should have lived longer.

So it will suffice, that it was her time and she had used it all up to the BRIM in the complete essence of what had defined her, brought her joy & fulfillment. Even as she still had more plans to do.

The Lucky ones are those who do and still do and still think of doing without the limitations of age, time……. even moreso, regardless of the hurdles & resistance against them. They are the true dreamers & doers.

Sleep well aunty Onyeka.

You were light.

You were bright.

Light perpetual shine upon you”.🕯🌹💖

• Uri Jones