Onyeka Onwenu on ‘My Father’s Daughter’ and trauma of the civil war that have remained with her
When Nigerian poet and playwright, John Pepper Clark in his famous poem ‘The Casualties’ wrote:
“The casualties are many, and a good number as well;
“Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck…”
He was emphasising the widespread fallout of war and the lingering trauma it leaves on the survivors making them and the unborn generation who would be told the story, the casualties.
Onyeka Onwenu, Nigeria’s multi-award winning actor, singer, broadcaster and politician, who witnessed the Nigerian civil war as a teenager between 1967 and 1970, still lives with the memory and trauma of the war 50 years later.
“The images of sick children, the sound of the dying, the anguished cry of a wounded soldier in great pain, being operated on without anesthesia and many more,” are the incidences of the 30-month war that have remained with Onwenu.
Hearing the sound of thunder still triggers sounds of bombing for her.
She revealed all these in a conversation with Neusroom. She talks about her life and career as documented in ‘My Father’s Daughter’, her compelling new memoir released on October 1, 2020.
50 years after the civil war, a sense of rebellion, victimhood, rage, trauma and division is woven deeply into the Nigerian system. Many young Nigerians below age 50 who didn’t witness the war still carry the sense of victimhood and displacement. The Easterners believe they are the real casualties and many are still angry that the war and its devastating effects are not being talked about enough. The minority ethnic groups – Ijaw, Efik, Urhobo among others have countered the narrative that the Igbos were the real casualties, while the North and the West also claim they were casualties.
“The Biafran war is still wrapped in a formal silence,” Chimamanda Adichie wrote in The New Yorker. “There are no major memorials, and it is hardly taught in schools.” She added: “We cannot hide from our history. Many of Nigeria’s present problems are, arguably, consequences of an ahistorical culture.”
“It saddens me how abusive we are to each other, with some exhibiting such ignorance in their utterance,” said Onwenu who believes the older generation should be blamed for the growing mistrust and tribal war among the younger generation.
“They learned from us, the older generation. When we misbehave, when we misspeak, our children are watching and listening,” she said. “It is our responsibility to correct now.”
Those who died in the war are not only the casualties, Onwenu said the war dislocated her family in every way imaginable.
“There was instability, there was war and all that it entailed – death, bloodshed, hunger and deprivation, disease and sickness. My family lost every material comfort and procession.
“Fortunately we had land on which to grow food. The war front was just a short distance off. We saw death and suffering around us. But God spared our lives. Many died.”
Despite the death, confusion, dislocation and the stagnant trudge brought by the war, Onwenu paved a path through the muck by creating music to entertain the family dislocated by the war and the war had a great influence on her music.
“I had a family group known as ‘The Big Three’, made up of a sister, a cousin and myself,” she said. “We were the family entertainers. We sang to make everybody dance and forget the rigors of war.”
When her music career beckoned professionally, the war influenced one of her songs, ‘Bia Nulu’, released in 1986, 16 years after the war. But Onwenu thinks her path in music had been created long before the war.
“I think I began to sing as soon as I could speak. My mum was a singer and everybody knew that singing was something I was going to do,” she said.
The daughter of Nigerian educationist and politician D.K. Onwenu who died in 1956, had plenty to write about and according to her, “people will have to read the book” for all the interesting events about her life and career memories which she said are too many to recount in her conversation with Neusroom.
The rise of the United States-trained journalist as a singer in the 1980s coincided with her fame as a broadcaster after her BBC/NTA documentary ‘Nigeria: A Squandering of Riches’. The documentary which showcased corruption as well as the Niger Delta agitation for resource control shot her to international fame in 1984.
She followed the release of her first album ‘Polygamy’ in 1984, with several other hits that dominated the airwaves for decades – ‘One Love’, ‘Wait for me’ with Sunny Ade, ‘Iyogogo’, ‘Bia Nulu’ among many others.
She also had an interesting broadcasting and movie career and recounting the events that shaped her broadcasting career may require writing another book.
The ‘Elegant Stallion’ as she was nicknamed by the Nigerian media also talked extensively about the state of the Nigerian music industry in ‘My Father’s Daughter’. She told Neusroom “we are moving forward and backwards at the same time. This is a whole book on its own and I deal extensively with it in My Father’s Daughter.”
She doesn’t see passing on the music legacy to her children happening as none of her children appear to be interested in doing music.
“They have the aptitude but I am not sure they are interested. They are doing their own thing. There is no pressure to follow anybody.”
