Chief (Mrs.) Adaeze Nwakaego Okonkwo

Chapter 1

Early Life

Adaeze Nwakaego Anyanwu was born on 12 April 1938 in Umuoji, Idemili North, Anambra State, the third of eight children of Pa Anyanwu Okeke, a palm produce trader, and Ma Chinwe Anyanwu, a weaver. She grew up in a compound where children were counted by the village, not the household, and where every visitor was fed before being asked their business.

Every visitor was fed before being asked their business.

Chapter 2

Family Background

The Anyanwu family were early converts to the Catholic faith in Umuoji. Morning prayers began before the first cockerel and ended with each child reciting a psalm. Adaeze, who could read before she was six, became the family reader.

Chapter 3

Education

She attended St. Monica's Primary School, Umuoji, then Women's Teacher Training College, Awka, qualifying as a Grade Two teacher in 1958 at a time when few girls in her community completed secondary school. Her father sold two plots of land to keep her in school, a sacrifice she repaid a thousand times over in the lives of other people's children.

Her father sold two plots of land to keep her in school.

Chapter 4

Career and Professional Life

Mama taught for forty-one years, beginning at Community Primary School, Nkwelle and retiring in 1999 as Head Teacher of St. Monica's Primary School, the very school she had attended as a girl. Thousands of pupils passed through her classrooms. Doctors, judges, traders, bishops and market women alike still greet her as Ma Teacher.

Chapter 5

Marriage and Family

In 1961 she married Chief Lawrence Obiora Okonkwo, a civil servant and later a community leader, in a marriage that lasted fifty-two years until his passing in 2013. Together they raised seven children and fostered nine others through school.

Fifty-two years, seven children, and nine more raised as her own.

Chapter 6

Faith and Spiritual Journey

A daily communicant for more than sixty years, Mama served as President of the Catholic Women Organisation, Umuoji Parish, for eleven years. She led the parish harvest committee, trained catechism pupils and prayed the rosary aloud each evening until the final week of her life.

Chapter 7

Leadership and Service

As Ezinne of Umuoji she mediated family disputes, counselled young wives and sat on the council that rebuilt the village town hall in 1994. She was known for refusing to speak until both sides had finished, and for a judgement that no one appealed.

Chapter 8

Community Impact

Through the Adaeze Education Purse, begun quietly in 1982 from her teacher's salary, she paid the fees of more than four hundred children. Many did not learn who their benefactor was until her wake.

More than four hundred children, most of whom never knew her name.

Chapter 9

Achievements and Awards

Anambra State Best Head Teacher Award (1991); Papal Benemerenti Medal for lay service (2004); Ezinne title of Umuoji (2008); Lifetime Service Award, Old Girls Association of St. Monica's (2016).

Chapter 10

Interests and Personality

Mama loved abacha with ugba, Igbo hymns sung in parts, her small garden of ugu and bitter leaf, and long telephone calls with grandchildren abroad. She had a dry, disarming humour and an unfailing memory for names.

Chapter 11

Final Years

Her last years were spent surrounded by family in the Umuoji homestead. Though her sight faded, she continued to lead evening prayers and to ask, of every visiting child, one question: are you still in school?

Are you still in school?

Chapter 12

Legacy

She leaves seven children, twenty-three grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, an education fund that bears her name, and a village that measures kindness by her standard.