‘Onyeka Onwenu used her art to heal the broken, mend a nation torn apart by bigotry, hatred’
By Michael O. Olatunbosun
I woke up today to the news of the passing of Onyeka Onwenu. She was reported to have died yesterday at 72 after performing at a birthday party in Lagos. She was a diva and music legend, journalist, and activist whose life and arts influenced me early in my formative years. She was an actress with panache, and she carried herself with grace even as a politician.
Her socially-conscious lyrics were the butterflies that mesmerised our soft minds in the 1980s. She used her arts and voice to quicken us to life. She used her art to reset our perspectives. She used her art to heal the broken and mend a nation whose people are torn apart by bigotry and hatred. She used her art to console the broken-hearted. In fact, her art preached better messages of love and unity and belief in one nation than all the government-sponsored mass mediated messages at the time.
In that light, I recall some of her songs especially ‘One Love’. That was the song which she performed just before her passing. It is a song that draws you out of your perception of other fellow citizens and tells you that it is of no use fighting them. The one that she did with King Sunny Ade also comes to mind as a striking evergreen. Done in 1989 or thereabout, ‘Wait for Me’ speaks to family planning, especially when the message of family planning and child-spacing just burst into national consciousness. Those days we sang along whenever the song was played on NTA. I was in Calabar at the time, and remembering this song now draws sweet memories.
One of her other songs that tickles me a lot is ‘Dancing in the Sun’. As I write this text, I still see the big-chested hefty men who carried the royal raft on which she sat in that video in my mind’s eye. Most of the guys in the video were my friends then. They were weightlifters who used to chat with me in my mother’s shop at the Calabar stadium. They used to buy their sports kits and accessories at our shop, Independent Sports Stores.
Onyeka did many more songs than we can count or recall. Many of them are on my laptop. ‘Ekwe’, ‘Odenigbo’, ‘Iyokoko’. You remember also ‘You and I’, ‘Alleluya’, etc. All of them, including the ones she sang in Igbo will blow your mind. Evergreens!
Onyeka belonged to a class of journalists who shaped my approach to the practice today. Data and incisive investigation and backed with narration that is globally appealing and revealing. Along with equally departed legends like Matt Dadzy, Sadiq Daba, Yinka Craig and many more influenced me greatly.
We have lost an elegant stallion. Onyeka and her songs will forever grace our hearts with transformative messages. They will perpetually prick our hearts to the imperative of humanity and love.
May God give us all the strength to bear the loss of our song bird, Onyeka!
#TakeALeap!
#MediaMaestros …encounters from my lens!
* Culled from Michael Oluwashogo Olatunbosun’s Facebook wall
