The news of the death of Nigerian musician Onyeka Onwenu on 30 July 2024 hit me, as a musician and popular music scholar, like a thunderbolt. I have listened to and appreciated Onyeka’s music since I was in my 20s.
Onwenu was aged 72 – and video clips of her last performance at a birthday ceremony showed her energy level and exuberance, making the sudden transition hard to fathom.
Aspiring musicians in Nigeria looked up to the big names in the industry as models and sources of inspiration. Onwenu stood out as a rising star in the early 1980s, when I first heard her name. But it went beyond music. I watched her 1984 BBC-NTA documentary Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches on television. Written and presented by Onwenu, it was a masterpiece in terms of technical quality and its underpinning ideological intent. It spoke to the corruption of the Shehu Shagari administration (1979-1983).
