This morning (July 31, 2024), I woke up and went straight to my phone to check my WhatsApp messages, something I rarely do that early. Last night the network had been bad and my messages failed to drop from around 8 pm till well past midnight when I went to sleep.
As a journalist and communication consultant, I get many messages coming through this channel (useful and mundane). The network was back and the messages started pouring in.
The one that attracted my attention first was from my friend Jebose Azuka from the USA. Jebose, to those of us who know him well, is not a man to ignore. Don’t mind the usual kwata between him and another friend Maxim Uzoatu, I won’t share how they describe one another here.
Jebose’s message made the sleep to disappear from my eyes immediately. It was titled: REFLECTIONS ON ONYEKA ONWENU, THE “ELEGANT STALLION”. I didn’t immediately process it and I thought he was just in his usual self trying to attract me to read it.
His first sentence jolted me, it read: “Nigeria today mourns the loss of a beloved creative talent…” I hollered and my wife immediately woke up asking what was amiss.
Onyeka Onwenu dead? If the message had come in from another source I’d have dismissed it and returned to bed or done something else. But not from Jebose! I began to search credible news sites immediately.
Jebose’s tribute had come in at 3 am. I went to bed at 1 am and never heard of it on TV news, perhaps because the network was bad it never came before I went to bed.
I started my journalism career as an entertainment reporter in Jos in the 80s. I followed her career from her debut as a youth corps member on NTA. She co-anchored the flagship news and current affairs of the NTA with the programme NEWSWEEK, with John Chiamen.
The picture here is the cover of her first album produced by the late Sonny Okosun. I did a review of it and others for The Sunday Standard in Jos.
When she did a duet on family planning with KSA, I also did a review of the ‘WAIT FOR ME’ track for the paper. Years later the review almost got me a job with an international family planning organisation before politics intervened (story for another day).
I join the world in mourning a great soul, a great journalist, writer, and artist. Sadly, she had to go now. She was one of the special female senior journalists that I thought would be around at the presentation of our ongoing project on NIGERIA FEMALE EDITORS book project.
It’s sad to see her go but as the writer wrote, “Who knows for whom the bells tolls?” As the title of her debut declared, Onyeka lived an ENDLESS LIFE.
* Dr Oyegbile is a journalist and media consultant based in Lagos
