By Nehru Odeh
Barely eight months after her father’s demise, multiple award –winning novelist, feminist and public intellectual, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has lost her mother, Grace Ifeoma Adichie.
Mrs Adichie, the first female registrar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, passed on on Monday, March 1st, 2021 in Awka, Anambra State. She was aged 78.
“It was very sudden and we are devastated,” a family spokesperson said.
Mrs Adichie’s death is coming at a time the renowned writer has yet to recover from her father’s demise.
She is survived by six children: Ijeoma, Uchenna, Chuks, Okechukwu, Chimamanda and Kenechukwu; as well as, nine grandchildren, in-laws and many relatives.
Ogaga Ifowodo, Poet, lawyer and activist also lost his mother, Augusta (Ogosita as the folks rendered it in the lyrical Isoko tongue) on Tuesday, 23 February 2021.
In a message he posted on his Facebook page, Ifowodo said she was aged 107 according to oral history and mathematical calculations.
The poet described his mother as the most loving, large hearted and self-sacrificing woman that walked the earth.
“My mother, the most loving, large-hearted and self-sacrificing woman that walked the earth took her last breath, closed her eyes and joined the ancestors at 5 AM Tuesday, 23 February 2021. She wasn’t born in a hospital and had no birth certificate, but all the oral history and mathematical calculations give her age as 107 years.
“Yes, I am the child of her old age, the last of her four children, the son she wanted as male playmate for her three daughters, making me a man blessed among women right from the crib!
“Despite her enviable longevity, her transfiguration brought tears to my eyes. You see, my father died when I was only a year old. And she fended for us all alone till I was seven and my uncle raised me as his first born.
“But there’s joy in my heart! She faced life with uncommon courage, her love of neighbour as great or greater than love of herself,” Ifowodo said.