Nigeria’s celebrated music icon, Onyeka Onwenu, known as the “Elegant Stallion”, will be buried today in Lagos, News About Nigeria reports.
The funeral service, which was announced by the family, will take place at the Fountain of Life Church, Ilupeju, followed by a private burial at a vault in Ikoyi.
Onyeka died aged 72 on July 30, 2024, after collapsing at an event honouring Dr. Stella Okoli, the Managing Director of Emzor Pharmaceuticals, where she had performed one of her songs.
Hours later, she died at Reddington Hospital, Ikeja, having suffered a heart attack.
Onyeka Onwenu was a singer, actor, broadcaster, and activist whose love ballads and songs about women’s rights were a soothing balm during Nigeria’s rocky 1980s and earned her the nickname “Elegant Stallion”.
She is best known for the disco anthem “One Love (1986)”. Another of her hits, “You and I”, was repurposed for the 1999 movie “Conspiracy”, which she also starred in – and is widely regarded as one of the most iconic soundtracks of Nollywood, the world’s second-largest film-production industry.
Onwenu kept a very private personal life and is survived by two sons from a marriage in 1984, which she said she left because she was constantly depressed.
