In February 2022, I interviewed Onyeka Owenu for The Africa Report, a foreign magazine. Onyeka died this week, so let me share that interview with you as a small tribute to a late great friend.

The last two lines, at the end, make me weep.

We are sipping Gold Blend Expresso coffee in Onyeka Onwenu’s apartment in Ikoyi, the most salubrious neighbourhood in Lagos. The décor is pleasingly minimalist.

Today is her 70th  birthday and she’s in an expansive mood.

In her early 20s, she was a tour guide at the United Nations headquarters in New York. In her early 60s, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan invited her to be Director-General of the National Centre for Women Development, NCWD, in Abuja.

In the 40 years that elapsed between these two international and domestic public service stints, Onwenu became an acclaimed TV journalist, composer, singer, actress, author, activist and politician.

“A Squandering of Riches”, a 1984 collaboration between the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, and the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, was the project that transformed her into a star.

This documentary – in typical Renaissance Woman style, she not only researched, scripted and presented it but wrote and sang the theme song – provided global audiences with a vivid snapshot of Nigeria in the wake of the 1970s oil boom and highlighted the chronic dysfunctions that characterised the civilian government of Shehu Shagari, the then head of state.

“A Squandering of Riches” (accessible on YouTube) featured literary luminaries Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark and was an instant hit.

It focused on corruption, economic mismanagement, infrastructural decay, poverty and angry Niger Deltan victims of the hydrocarbon industry. Onwenu counts it as the biggest triumph of her career.

“Ten years later, long after he had been ousted by the Buhari/Idiagbon military coup, I bumped into Shagari in South Africa, at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration; and he lost his temper and confronted me. I think my reply stunned him,” she says laughing.

“I told him that I stood by everything I had said in the documentary but regarded him as a good man surrounded by bad people.”

All was forgiven. Friendship ensued.

Onwenu’s eventful life has been a kaleidoscope of colourful encounters with extraordinary people, such as revered Afrobeat pioneer, Fela Anikulapo Kuti (who asked her to join his harem and shrugged philosophically when she politely declined his marriage proposal), and the even more iconic Winnie Mandela for whom she wrote a song.

“Winnie broke down in tears when she first heard it at a command performance in her husband’s honour in Nigeria, shortly after he was released from prison. Some journalists told me that it was the first time she had ever cried in public. I admired her so much.”

Then there are the controversies, the most striking of which revolved around her appearance at a concert linked to the nefarious “Million Man March” that was organised in 1998 to support General Sani Abacha, a hated military dictator who specialised in homicides.

Onwenu tells me how she was misled into participating.

In a nutshell, the concert was sold to her by a fellow musician as a fundraiser for the Super Eagles national football team. She provides more details about this toxic drama in her autobiography, titled My Father’s Daughter (published in 2020 and available on Amazon).

This book is a jolly good read and covers her early childhood as the adored daughter of a distinguished father, his premature death, her traumatic experiences as a teenage nursing aide during the Biafran Civil War, her time as a student in elite American colleges…her relationship with her feisty mother, how she became a queen of African pop and Nollywood, her clashes with various institutions, her refusal to tolerate nonsense from obnoxious individuals and numerous other personal and professional stories, including an account of years with an emotionally abusive spouse.

“I won’t because I am a very private person!” is her response when I request the name and occupation of the husband who caused her so much anguish, a man about whom very little is known, even to folks who have worked and socialised with Onwenu for decades.

Given that celebrities attract endless investigations, gossip and exposes, it is strange that someone so high-profile has been able to conceal the identity of the father of her two now adult sons – “my greatest personal achievements” is how she proudly describes them.

But she is at least willing to share the hell that the sadistic mystery man put her through before she finally realised that she’d never satisfy him, no matter how hard she tried to be a “good wife”.

So, she quit bending over backwards to placate him and divorced him to save herself from physical collapse and a mental breakdown.

“He chose to marry a famous woman, then punished me for being famous. He said that he felt belittled by my aura and assured me that nobody else would want me when he had finished with me.

“He tormented me in so many different ways and didn’t contribute financially or appreciate my efforts, even when I begged influential contacts to help him when he got into trouble with the authorities.

“But the thing that hurts me most is that he was truly evil to our innocent children and coldly rejected their loving attempts to relate to their Dad,” she tells me, visibly shaken by painful memories.

Onwenu is, at the end of the day, an indomitable diva of substance and not one to rest on her lush laurels or take the view that surrender is the best policy when old age is creeping up on you.

Despite having tried and failed to become a local council chairperson in her ancestral terrain, her appetite for positive change remains undimmed and she continues to be vocal and politically active.

She swears that she will not vote in the 2023 presidential election if a candidate from her marginalised Igbo ethnic group – a business-focused tribe from Nigeria’s South-East region – is not on the ballot.

Nowadays, she is a National Treasure par excellence. So much so that President Buhari penned a 70th  birthday tribute to her, despite her overt disappointment in his regime (“the situation in this country has worsened so much since he took over from Jonathan in 2015!”).

Meanwhile, she is still an immensely popular entertainer.

A TV series based on her book is planned.

It ain’t over till the slim lady sings.