Onyeka Onwenu

Onyekachukwu Mary Onwenu was born on 31 January 1952 at Obosi, in the Eastern Region of Nigeria, and was raised in Port Harcourt with ancestral roots in Arondizuogu, in present-day Imo State. She was the youngest daughter of D. K. (Dickson Kanu) Onwenu, a respected educationist and politician, and his wife Hope. When Onyeka was only four, her father died in a traffic collision, a week before he was to take up an appointment as Minister of Education, leaving Hope to raise five children alone.

Educated abroad, Onwenu earned a bachelor's degree in international relations and communication from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and a master's in media studies from The New School in New York. She returned home in 1980 and, working with the Nigerian Television Authority, launched a music career that fused Igbo folk melody with contemporary pop. Her voice — clear, tender and commanding — made her the leading Igbo woman of post-civil-war Nigerian popular music, and earned her the fond title "the Elegant Stallion."

Onwenu was never only a singer. As a journalist she wrote and presented the searching 1984 BBC/NTA documentary "Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches," a landmark examination of national corruption. She acted with grace in films such as "Half of a Yellow Sun" and "Lion Heart," and gave her energies to human rights, women's empowerment and the cause of national unity. In 2013 she was appointed Executive Director and Chief Executive of the National Centre for Women Development.

She died on 30 July 2024 in Lagos, aged 72, collapsing shortly after singing at a friend's celebration — a life that ended, fittingly, in song. May the Elegant Stallion be honored: a voice that carried a people's pride, and never let it be diminished.