Abstract
Helen Obiageli Chukwuma, née Obba, was born on August 18, 1942, to Chief Bernard Uzowulu Obba, Ogene Onishaa of Umuoshele village, Abala-Uno, in Ndokwa East Local Government Area of Delta State and Chief Mrs. Cecilia Uyaoke Obba, Okwesileze Enyi bu Odu, of Isiolu village, Ossomala, in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State of Nigeria. The second of eight children, she started school at the age of four and attended St. Joseph’s Primary School, Kaduna, and Roman Catholic Mission School, Bauchi, in Northern Nigeria. Later, Helen’s parents, mindful of the primacy of education in success and desirous of giving their eight children the best education available, decided to send their two oldest children, Helen and her elder brother, down to their maternal grandmother in Eastern Nigeria to continue their education and prepare for the highly competitive entrance examination into any of those select secondary schools run by Irish missionaries that were famous for their first-rate education. Years later, Helen would have this to say about her parents’ decision: “This couple had the uncanny foresight to send me to school along with my elder brother, the late Barrister Lawrence Chukwuemeka Obba, at a time when female education was considered a waste of time and precious resources.”1 While in Eastern Nigeria, Helen continued her primary education at Immaculata Primary School, Onitsha. In primary five, one full year shy of officially qualifying to take the entrance examination, and on the encouragement of a dynamic teacher, the late Mrs. Egwele, she sat for and passed the entrance examination to the much-coveted Queen of the Rosary College (QRC), Onitsha, in 1954.
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Notes
Helen Chukwuma, Women Writing: Feminism and National Development in Nigeria (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: University of Port Harcourt Press, 2004), 2.
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 4.
Ibid., 12.
Ibid., 3.
Helen Chukwuma, Personal interview, September 16, 2012.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Gegeli is a title given solely to deserving women in Chukwuma’s natal community. It has connotations of kindness and magnanimity and refers to a woman who gives bounteously, feeds her community and caters to its welfare. Chukwuma had priorly made a personal donation toward the development of the school project in her natal hometown. At the conferment of the Gegeli title, Chukwuma was presented with an insignia—a wooden ladle—which she brandished as she danced and which was symbolic of what she represents in her community.
Ajie is a cabinet title; it is a title of accomplishment and grandeur but also of responsibility. The Ajie is expected to be a nurturer, protector and promoter of the sociocultural and material well-being of his family and the community at large. Upon a man’s investiture as Ajie, he is expected to feed the community for three whole days.
The title Odoziaku (literally the arranger of wealth) is actually developmental. When a woman first marries, she is said to be enjoying her husband’s wealth. But later, when she matures and becomes fully entrenched in the family, she then evolves from enjoying her husband’s wealth to contributing to the family’s resources and becoming a participant in the wealth-making effort and so is in a position to “arrange” their collective wealth. Odoziaku, therefore, is a significant and fitting title for the wife of an Ajie.
Chukwuma, Women Writing.
Seiyifa Koroye and Noel Anyadike, Woman in the Academy: Festschrift for Professor Helen Chukwuma(Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Pearl Publishers, 2004).
Ibid., 27.
Chukwuma, Women Writing, 36.
Helen Chukwuma, “Introduction,” in Helen Chukwuma, ed., Accents in the African Novel, 2nd edition (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Pearl Publishers, 2003).
Chukwuma, Women Writing, 16.
Ibid., 36.
Ibid., 40.
Ibid., 17. Chukwuma notes that the Magiras are the heads of the palace women in precolonial Borno empire.
Chukwuma, introduction to Accents, ix.
Helen Chukwuma, ed., Feminism in African Literature, 2nd edition (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Pearl Publishers, 2003).
Helen Chukwuma, “Positivism and the Female Crisis: The Novels of Buchi Emecheta,” in Henrietta C. Otokunefor and Obiageli C. Nwodo, eds., Nigerian Female Writers(Lagos, Nigeria: Malthouse Press Ltd., 1989), 2–18.
Ibid., 2.
Ibid.
Chukwuma, “Introduction,” xv.
Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood(New York: George Braziller, 1979).
Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen(New York: George Braziller, 1974).
Flora Nwapa, One Is Enough(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1992).
Mariama Bâ, So Long a Letter(London: Heinemann, 1989).
Chukwuma, “Introduction.”
Chukwuma, Women Writing, 40.
Ibid., 13.
Chukwuma, Accents.
Ibid., vii.
Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language,” in Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day(London: Heinemann, 1975).
Chukwuma, “Introduction,” xii.
Helen Chukwuma, Igbo Oral Literature: Theory and Tradition, 2nd edition (Port Harcourt, Nigeria: Pearl Publishers, 2002), 1.
Ibid., 1.
Ibid., x.
Ibid.
Ibid., xi.
Ibid., xii.
Achebe, Morning Yet.
Koroye and Anyadike, Woman in the Academy, 20–21.
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© 2013 Gloria Chuku
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Ohale, C. (2013). Helen Chukwuma: The Inimitable Advocate for African Women’s Empowerment. In: Chuku, G. (eds) The Igbo Intellectual Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311290_12
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