Onyeka Onwenu, the iconic Nigerian singer and actress, has passed away at the age of 72.
The ace songwriter was said to have died on Tuesday night at the Reddington Hospital in Lagos.
According to TheNiche, Onwenu had attended the 80th birthday party of Stella Okoli, the founder of Emzor pharmaceutical manufacturing company, in Lagos.
Often referred to as the ‘Elegant Stallion’, the singer was said to have slumped at the birthday party after she had performed.
“It is very sad. Onyeka Onwenu just performed at the birthday of Mrs. Stella Okoli today (Tuesday, July 30, 2024), and after performing, she slumped,” the news outlet quoted a source to have said.
Onyeka was born on January 31, 1952. She hailed from Arondizuogu, a small town in Ideato North, Imo state, southeastern but was raised in Port Harcourt, the capital city of Rivers state.
In the 70s, the singer attended Wellesley College, Massachusetts where she obtained a BA in International Relations and Communication. She also owned an MA in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research, New York.
She worked for the United Nations as a tour guide before returning to Nigeria in 1980 to complete her mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), in Lagos.
She worked as a reporter at NTA. In 1984, she wrote and presented the internationally acclaimed BBC/NTA documentary ‘Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches’. Her piece was turned into a film about corruption in Nigeria, as well as the intractable Niger Delta agitation for resource control and campaign against environmental degradation in the oil-rich region of Nigeria.
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