Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was born on November 4, 1933 at Zungeru in northern Nigeria to Sir Louis Phillippe Odumegwu Ojukwu, a businessman from Nnewi in southeastern Nigeria. Sir Louis was into transport business; he made a wise use of the business boom during the Second World War to become one of the richest men in Nigeria when he passed in 1966.
So it could be rightly said that Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was born into wealth. Born in November 1933 at Zungeru, Niger State. He attended his primary school at St. Patrick School in Lagos then later progressed to C.M.S Grammar School, Lagos.
According to The Nation In 1944, when he was 10years old, his father Sir Louis Philippe Ojukwu sent him to King’s College, Lagos public school running along British public school line where he spent only 2years. In 1946, his father sent him to Epsom College, Surrey England to finish his secondary education.
He spent 6years at Epsom college and headed to Lincoln College in Oxford where he secured a Bachelor Degree in Arts in 1952. Although, Dim Chukwuemeka wanted to study Modern History but his father, Sir Louis objected and persuade him to study Law which Chukwuemeka agreed to do. He studied Law for just one year then switched over to Modern History which was his first desired course.
The many wives of Ojukwu:
HE had a tough and oracular mien. The more you tried to understand him, the more difficult and complex he seemed. Not many, especially the men folk, could decode him easily. But beneath those deportments were his charm, élan, oratory.
From Elizabeth Okoli, daughter of Nigeria’s first Post-Master General whose marriage to the Ikemba Nnewi lasted for just two years, to Njideka Onyekwelu who had earlier been married to a certain Dr. Mends, before tying the nuptial knot with Ojukwu; Victoria who he met in Cote d’Ivoire; Stella Onyeador, chief bridesmaid during Njideka’s marriage and finally to Bianca, they all saw in Ojukwu a Romeo or King of love in whom they were well pleased.
In what would mark Ojukwu’s metamorphosis from boy to man was his marriage to his first wife Elizabeth Okoli from ‘Nnukwu Awka’, Anambra State in 1956. Elizabeth was a senior nursing sister by profession and daughter of Nigeria’s first Post-Master General. He was said to have wedded her in court. The marriage, however, suffered a setback, leading to the couple going their separate ways in 1958.
His second love, which he later made his second wife. They were married in 1964. Njideka had earlier been married to one Dr. Mends, with whom she had a set of twins, a boy and a girl, before they separated. Njideka and Ojukwu were said to have met through their fathers who were friends and business partners. After their first encounter, they met again three years later at a tube station in London. A relationship ensued soon afterwards and was subsequently cemented through marriage, which produced three children, two of whom were named Emeka (Jnr) and Okigbo.
Njideka
Victoria
A ‘hot commodity’ he turned out to be. Just as one woman was walking out of his life, another was making her way into his life, as if to fulfill the scriptural provision that ‘it is not good for a man to be alone’. Ojukwu’s taste for ravishing beauties was never in doubt. But it was during his exile in Cote d’Ivoire that it assumed a new height. That was where Victoria stepped in to keep the Ikemba’s marital life aglow.
Stella Onyeador
As the affair with Victoria began to grow cold, the Eze Nd’Igbo Gburugburu had a replacement waiting in the wings in beautiful Stella Onyeador, sister of society impresario, late Angela Onyeador. According to reports, Ojukwu and Onyeador nestled together for about 10 years without an offspring to show for it.
Bianca
Odumegwu-Ojukwu also got married to a beauty-full Waawa woman, Bianca Onoh, the Nigerian 1989 Miss Inter-Continental Pageant after his first wife and his second wife, Stella died in 2010.
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