Onyeka Onwenu

““My mum was the one who when I was in college would write, ‘remember your music.’ She knew that I had followed the family tradition by going to school, she encouraged me to not forget the artistic side of it. There was a rule in my house that when you had done your Masters, and only after that, get your education first.””

““The example of her life was a teaching tool because she showed that she could stand as a woman on her own…be a contributing member of the community.””

““When people ask me, ‘what is it that you have,’ I tell them it is contentment. My spirit as a Christian fills me in with contentment. We are here for a purpose. Find that purpose and work towards realizing it. The challenges will come. I mean you can’t run away from them. In life there must be issues. It is only when you’re six feet deep that you don’t get them anymore. If you can put all that together and put your faith and trust in God who sent you here, you’re fulfilled.””

““Small minds, narrow minds can’t comprehend a great spirit when they see it. When they insist in stereotyping you, even when the evidence is there, look at them carefully, they are lacking some sort of professionalism.””

““These young artists of today will evolve. They will evolve. I am hoping that they will evolve. They cannot remain at the nonsensical level of shaking their bum-bum and exposing body parts. No. That’s not what your art is all about. You can express yourself that way, but please, to a certain extent, do not make music a pornographic thing,””

““Mistakes make you human. But the point is, how do you look at your mistakes? What are they there for? Nobody is infallible. You are going to forge ahead based on what you have learnt from them. When you fall down, you have to get up. Learn your lessons, get up and keep going even stronger.””

““I wonder why government is not doing anything to protect the copyright of artistes. These are the things that affect our economy. The music industry is a large section of the economy of this country. Why is government not paying attention, not caring? These are frustrations. Your intellectual property is your wealth and somebody is sitting on it. People are making money off someone’s work.””

““I have learnt to keep my privacy out of the public purview especially in discussions with journalists. But there is nothing hidden in my life. I live a very open life. But I decided from day one not to discuss my family on the pages of newspapers, because it is not fair to them. They do not have the opportunity to present themselves the way they would have liked to. And that is not fair.””

““I don’t live like a star. When I go on stage, my reality takes nothing away from me, because I will diva you. That is my training that is my life. I will bring whatever I have to bring to the stage. I give the best performance and lift people up. When I come down from the stage, I am a mother, I am a homemaker, I am a gardener, a cleaner, I go to the market, I cook. I have never employed a cook in my life. Those are the things that rule my life.””

““I probably would have been somewhere buying and selling like every other woman who is trying to survive. If I didn’t have education, it would still have been the same thing. I can buy and sell at all levels, considerably.””

“"I have great admiration for market women. The incredible thing that we don’t know is that they are holding up a large sector of the economy of this country. These women that sell tomatoes, pepper, onions; that is how they raise their children. That is how they train their children up to university level. That is how they hold their families together."”

“"I am just an ordinary human being, a woman trying to live her life in the best way possible; dealing with the issues of life, making contributions to the society and to leave this place better than I met it. Hopefully, I can achieve that even at a personal level, because if you look at the country as a whole, the country has deteriorated. So I probably will not leave it better than I met it, unfortunately."”

““I cried my eyes out, with the realization that as difficult as my life was, it could not be compared with what Winnie Mandela was going through. I was no Winnie Mandela for sure, but I could identify with her loneliness and some of her pain. That night, I could not sleep. I had to put my pain to a song. I needed to give something back to Winnie for the sacrifice of her life to the Apartheid struggle, in which every decent human being had a stake. I saw her sacrifice as a global one, made by an African Woman, brave and courageous beyond words, for her man and her country.””

““Be careful of what you live for posterity. If you can’t give your best, don’t step out because what you recorded is always going to be there for long, so you got to give it the very best. Center your artistry around something that will last with meaning, not just shaking bumbum and it’s just the women that are always shaking it, the men don’t shake anything. Women are worth more than shaking their bumbum. Enough of the bumbum. Though, everyone is free to be creative, but just know that yours will not last while the other person with meaningful lyrics will remain evergreen.””

““I was targeted and abused for being an Igbo woman who came to give jobs to and elevate my people while sidelining them.””

““Politics must not be left in the hands of notorious people or the mediocre. We must bring our best into it and no one has a right to complain if one refuses to get into politics, and some other people ventured into it and make laws that will affect your generation yet unborn.””

““NTA used ‘Iyi Ogogo‘ to open and close their station for eight years, but they didn‘t pay me a kobo. They didn‘t even ask my permission. When I asked, they barred me from being shown on NTA and I went on hunger strike. They felt they were doing me a favour by using my music. Ben Bruce said ‘Don‘t touch that lady. I don‘t want to see her face, I don‘t want to hear her music on my station‘. And I said no, it wasn‘t his station, that NTA belonged to the nation. This was in 2000.””