Onyeka Onwenu: How she fell in love at 13
By Editor
Legendary singer Onyeka Onwenu died last Tuesday moments after an amazing musical performance at the 80th birthday party of Stella Okoli, founder of Emzor Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company did not give any indication that that would be her last performance.
She was simply elegant as she entertained the guests with her evergreen songs, reports Saturday Vanguard. She was said to have slumped in her seat afterwards and was rushed to the hospital where doctors battled in vain to revive her.
The 72-year-old queen of songs, in her autobiography titled “My Father’s Daughter”, which she released in 2020, recounted her journey into the world of music. She also spoke about controversies surrounding her and how she fell in love at the age of 13.
In her memoir, Onyeka Onwenu first revealed how her music life started: “I was holidaying in Chicago with my cousin, Godfrey DanChimah who was married to Sonny Okosun’s sister-in-law, Ada. One day, Sonny called their house and I picked the phone. We got talking and I told him that I was interested in professional music.
“He asked for a demo tape, which I sent to him, it was my cover of “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin. He liked it , but warned that jazz may not sell well in Nigeria.
“Towards the end of my stay at the United Nations, another Nigerian artiste came calling. Dora Ifudu’s song, “Ada” was making waves around the country; I wanted to find out from her what it was like being a female musician in Nigeria.
“Dora gave me a history of her struggles in the industry, she talked about criticisms and unwarranted attacks by the press and the difficulty of controlling one’s productions and demanding higher value for work. I was not discouraged. With my media skills, I had something else to fall back on, if music failed. I just wanted to follow my passion.
“Once in Nigeria, I contacted Sonny Okosun and we began planning my debut album. I was fresh and had no clue about contracts on how the Nigerian music industry worked. Sonny took all the decisions for me. He selected the songs. “However, I brought my own interpretation and twist to them. Even before a contract with the recording company, EMI, Nigeria, was presented to me, we had begun recording the album with his band at the EMI studios in Lagos. There was excitement in the air about a new singer, which was me.
“In those days, making music was done with the whole band playing the song and everything recorded at the same time. If there was a mistake, we started all over again.
“Once Sonny Okosun , the producer felt satisfied with the basic work we had done in Lagos, off we went to London for post-production at Abby Roads Studios of EMI International, which was made famous by the Beatles.”
Recounting further, Onyeka Onwenu narrated how Sonny Okosun punished her for turning him down.
“In London, we drove straight to the hotel, where we would be staying. I waited to be checked into my room by Charles Okosun, my designated manger and Sonny Okosun’s brother but he led me into Sonny’s room, where my bags had been placed. I immediately asked for my own room or there would be no recording.
“Being a novice, I was not privy to the financial arrangement that Sonny Okosun had made on my behalf with EMI. I did not have a lawyer or anyone to advise me. On the London trip, I brought along some money for myself, which I relied on when Sonny Okosun decided to punish me for turning him down. I paid for all my expenses on the trip.
“When we completed the recording, with an overlay of the lead and backing vocals, and live guitar work, we mixed and mastered the sound. We also shot the videos of all six songs on the album. With a group of dancers and a small studio audience, no rehearsals, just passion for making music, we delivered a good performance. Everyone was happy, including Sonny Okosun. He had maintained a hostile attitude towards me and only communicated through his brother, who was my manager.
“In 1981, I released my first album, “Endless Life”. Although it was a remake of Sunny Okosun’s previously released works like “Help” and “Kenelum Jehova”, I brought my own interpretation to the songs. I added a cover of “Walk Right Back” by the Everly Brothers and Nigerians were introduced to the singing reporter, as Chinua Achebe had called me. Having made a small name, as a TV journalist, it was not surprising that my musical career took off aided by my popularity on television.
“I started getting invitations to live performances, which I excelled in. That was how I began to earn a living from music.”
Onyeka, however, stated that at an early stage of her career, she was dissatisfied with the technical quality of our recording.
“I would note, listening to the radio that each time Nigerian produced music came up, the quality dropped. It bothered me. It became imperative for me to improve the quality of my musical output.
The queen of songs also recalled that when she joined the industry, it was vibrant and the economy was strong compared to what we have today.
“There were some capable and talented women in the industry such as Dora Ifudu, a singer/songwriter, filmmaker and photographer, Martha Ulaeto, who mixed the operatic with a powerful African influence, Funmi Adams, a classical singer who blended her songs with contemporary folk music, Nelly Uchndu and her Igbo folklore, and Comfort Omoge, a traditional artiste from the mid-western Nigeria among others.
My love life
On her love life, Onyeka recounted:: “I fell in love for the first time at the age of 13 in 1965 and two years before the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war. Looking back, I realise that I was indeed too young to know what love was. What does a 13-year-old know about love, anyway?
“I am not sure, however, that in my case love was something conceptualised as much as it was intensively felt. I was struck by a bolt of lightning from out of the blues. My heart skipped a beat each time the object of my attraction entered my space and I wanted to be in his presence for as long as possible.
“The attraction was not physical at this point. It was a meeting of two souls that effortlessly understood each other.
Strong connection I felt from day one
“This strong connection was felt from day one, as I saw myself in his eyes, and he thought that I was beautiful. The sound of his voice was like something I had heard before, there was a sense of familiarity in it. The attraction between us was so powerful that I said to God, not long after meeting Prince Charming that I had met the man I was meant to marry. If the person in question was not the one, then God Himself should just forget it, because I would not marry another. It was an ultimatum.
“I was so sure of what I felt that my heart’s conviction came out in such a steely, matter-of-fact way, and with so much determination, firmness and finality. It was almost frightening that a girl of 13 would know her mind and express it so fearlessly. What a pugnacious little girl I must have been. I had no idea of the meaning of the words I was uttering; they just came tumbling out from the very depth of my soul
“I did learn a huge lesson afterwards; be careful what you say, what you ask for and what you wish for because you may just get it.
Age of innocence
“At 13, I was in my second year of secondary school. It was a time when, if you fancied a guy, you stayed far away from him. You were too shy to even admit that he was your love interest. If you saw him on one side of the road, you quickly moved to the other. There would be no contact, only an inner excitement that you had just sighted him. It was the age of innocence.
“My prince was a friend of my brothers and the whole family knew and liked him. They were probably aware of my attraction to him. Later events would bear me out.
“During the school holidays, our house was filled with a lot of people, friends, schoolmates and acquaintances.
“If you had friends, even of the opposite sex, you brought them home and they became friends with the whole family. There was no ‘corner-corner’ love as we say in pidgin English. Everything was out in the open and devoid of physical contact, of course.
“My Prince Charming really fit the bill. He was tall, dark and a handsome young man. A versatile, artistic, Shakespeare-quoting kindred spirit who lit up the room for me. There was something very special about him, an uncommon civility that made him interesting to engage. I am not sure that he was fully aware of my feelings for him.
“I do know that he was fascinated and was always attentive. He was interested in whatever I had to say and never talked down at me. I was treated with a great deal of respect almost as an equal. For this young man was the romantic focus of a girl’s active imagination, one made vivid by fairy-tale and romantic novels of the cheapo kind, like the ones exchanged among friends, worn out , frayed and slightly torn, from use.
“In those gushing stories, the Princess always got her Prince Charming in the end and they lived happily ever after.
“Could this love story, intense as it felt and hardly understood, be the product of the imagination of a 13-year-old with a creative mind? What were the chances that this strapping, good-looking man , fancied by more beautiful and sophisticated women would fall for little , old me, in a city like Port-Harcourt, where he had by far better choices? But he did and hopelessly so.
“By the close of 1966, when the echoes of war were heard in Biafra, the love of my young life had left Nigeria for further studies in Europe. I was trying to survive the war with the rest of my family. My brother, Richard and Sister Zoe, were also outside the country. My love and I lost contact and I had no idea whether I would ever see him again.
I remained in love with him
“I remained in love with him all this period. In fact, throughout the Nigeria/Biafra conflict, I was known as Miss “No Man’s land – the area or piece of land between two sides of a conflict. It belonged to no one. There were a few token and peripheral friendships, for sure but they were all just that. I wanted to be by myself mostly, alone with my fantasies and dreams. I thought constantly about the man who had captured my heart.
“In 1971, after the war had ended and just months before I was to leave for school in the United States, I ran into Prince Charming on the streets of Lagos. It was quite simply by serendipity.
“From then on and in full view of my family, we began a friendship. I was 19 years old. He was 26. We talked for hours, went out for meals and danced at a family gathering. My love worried in a letter later on , that my mum may not have approved of the obvious relationship.
“At 19, I had matured into a sensible young woman who could take care of herself. I had my mother’s trust. In the period of our re-connection, my love had fallen hopelessly in love with me. For the next three years, and with the knowledge and acceptance of my family, we began a truly romantic relationship; one which we both expected would end in marriage. Yet my darling was sensitive and respectful. It was not a physical relationship.
“I was still a little green behind the ears, having just survived a brutal war and still trying to catch up with the world that had moved ahead of me by four years. Yet my love considered me beautiful and extraordinary. He would write a few weeks after I arrived in the United States from Nigeria.
“My love and I were from a time when writing was how you communicated with people. There were no mobile phones, no email and no internet. With him in Europe and me in the United States, we wrote regularly even as we spoke occasionally on the phone.
“Those letters, I now realise, were instrumental in helping me survive my first two years in a foreign country. Having a friend and a mentor, who understood me, who, in fact, saw the potential in me before others did, was the deciding factor in my ability to thrive intellectually and emotionally. His love and attention gave me confidence in myself and my abilities…
Why I didn’t marry the love of my life
You must be wondering by now, why I didn’t marry my Prince Charming who had fallen head over heels in love with me. I wonder too. Looking back at the time we drifted apart in 1973, I realise that our timing was off. We were both not ready to marry and settle down; I was a sophomore at Wesley, with a whole life of learning ahead of me. The intensity of the emotions was overwhelming sometimes. We were still oceans apart and the long-distance romance was tasking.
“We had no time together, my love and I to talk. Later on, he had plans to come over to study and live in the United States, but they did not plan out. We lost touch and we both moved on . On my part, I did so, with much sadness.
How we found each other again
“My love and I found each other again in 1980, just as I prepared to return to Nigeria for good. It was a momentous reunion, an indescribably exquisite time together. We explored my city, New York . Walking on the streets of Manhattan and talking about everything under the sun. We listened to free classical music with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, together with thousands of others in Central Park. Alone for the first time in eight years, we had a wonderful time rebuilding an almost-forgotten friendship. Again, my darling was a sounding board for my idea about coming home.
“Again, my Prince Charming had found his way back into my life, at a time of great change and transition. Moving back, to Nigeria, a rather traumatic venture was made easier by his friendship, support and counsel. He was even at the airport to welcome me back, together with my whole family.
“My acclimatization to Nigeria was complete, my friend and I went our separate ways again.
The intensity of our feelings being just friends is difficult. We lost contact for 27 years until we bumped into each other at a local airport in Nigeria in 2009 and yet again, it was by serendipity. He had moved back to Europe and was just visiting home. It was a difficult meeting this time. We were like two ships passing each other in the night.
The impact he made on my life
“Looking back, I understand why. I was going through a lot of emotional upheavals in my on-again, off—again marriage. The worst thing I could have done would have been to add another emotional dimension to the muddle. I fled. After this uneventful chance meeting, I was sure that I could now put this friendship in a box and store it away from view, forever.
Perhaps, I thought I succeeded in doing that until serendipity threw up another meeting, one which reconnected us, once again, at a time of great transition in life. After the airport sighting in 2009, this meeting had taken 10 years. But then, we had known each other for 35 years. I have tried in all this time to define the relationship I had with this special person in my life, and the continued strong connection we feel, as if we were meant to help each other along life’s way.
“The timing of this most recent meeting has provided me with the opportunity to write about someone who had played a major role in my life, even when he was not physically around me. The story of my life would be incomplete without this sometimes sad but always inspiring love story.
“My friend and I may be in contact or we may not. But no matter how many oceans are between us, I remain grateful for this friendship and all that it taught me.”
“To the love of my life, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.Thank you for your kindness, for trusting in me with care, respect and appreciation. Thank you for believing in me. It gave me confidence. You saw my potential, even before I did and you convinced me that I was made for great things. Learned so much from you , even when you were not around, your compassion was palpable. Even now, I feel your encouragement. I hope I have not disappointed you. Thank you for being my brother and mentor, my friend for not being afraid to love me for myself, even as a pugnacious 13-year-old. Your friendship has enriched my life and I am glad that I finally have the opportunity to say, “Thank You.”