Tyna Onwudiwe: Afrikan Oyibo who passed 17 days after her 47th birthday

Tyna may have been away from the Nigerian music scene years before her ailment, but news of her death sent shockwaves across the nation as though she had just dropped a hit song a week before her death. Fans mourned from Johannesburg to Lagos. Tributes poured in in torrents. Her friends were devastated. Many wept uncontrollably.

She may be gone, but she is never forgotten, if not for anything, for creating a legacy that continues to be a strong influence on pop music around Africa today.
Tyna was 38 when she came into national fame in 1992, off the back of her debut album – Afrikan Oyibo (Tabansi Records).

Her full name? Tyna Adaora Onwudiwe. Her mother was Scottish and her father, a Nigerian from Anambra State.

Tyna’s music was philosophical and socially relevant.
Photo: Nairaland. Designer: Kume Akpubi

And her music? Constantly defying the boundaries of genre – delivering a mix of funk and pop that pundits could only term crossover. She entertained and influenced many generations of audiences and artistes.

“She had spunk, she had message, she was more aligned to African consciousness, blackism, getting out of colonial mentality, slavery and all that. A lot of people took up their activism from some of her philosophies and her penchant for socially relevant music,”

said Femi Akintunde-Johnson, FAJ, as he is fondly called, a veteran journalist and one of the most revered Nigerian entertainment journalists of all time. Her music was philosophical and according to FAJ, she had a penchant for socially relevant music.

“If she is talking about love, she’s talking about why love should be responsible and reciprocal, why it should be based on truth and facts and not on society whims and caprices. So she is always a didactic kind of person in African modernist way.”

It was not just her witty and charming music, unusual sets, and socially relevant message that endeared her to millions around the world. She left many in awe of her persona and art.

From warning against giving to indolence because time waits for no one on ‘Asiko lo laye, ara mi ema se s’ole…’, to condemning the violence, war and corruption that had left Africa ravaged by starvation and diseases in ‘Black on Black’ and putting her rap skills to test in her remake of Bob Marley ‘Turn your Lights Down Low’ from the 1977 album Exodus, the list of her musical interventions is unbelievable.

Another journalist, Jude Nwauzor, who covered the Nigerian entertainment scene for many years, described Onwudiwe’s music and creativity as futuristic and still trendy even two decades after her death. This must have informed Charly Boy’s stance that in the Nigerian music industry, “Tyna was in a class of her own. No one comes close.”

Tyna with late TV presenter, Femi Segun, on the set of NTA’s classic show – ‘Morning Ride’.
Photo: Nairaland. Designer: Kume Akpubi

In the last two decades, there has been a global appeal for Tyna’s kind of music and the new generation of artistes from Nigeria and Africa are getting massive global recognition for it. If she lived, Tyna would have turned 66 this year, and FAJ believes if Tyna was alive, she would still be making music. Like Angelique Kidjo, she may also have been on the list of Grammy Award winners from Africa.

Her contributions to pop music were prolific, persisting through a challenging era when it wasn’t as easy and profitable as it is now – parents used to disown their children for doing music after years of investing in their education. Tyna was a major part of Nigeria’s TV and radio history in the 1990s. Her music and videos, which were way ahead of their time, enjoyed constant airplay as music interludes on many shows on the few television stations at the time.

She was also very vocal and courageous. FAJ recalls how she rejected awards presented to her at the Fame Music Award (FMA) in 1993, because she believed she deserved the ‘Crossover Award’ won by late Sunny Okosun.

“In 1993, despite the fact that we were close, she rejected some of the awards she was given right on stage. An award was given to Sunny Okosun’s ‘Motherless Child’, she felt being a reggae-influenced music, it shouldn’t be in the cross-over category where one of her songs was also nominated and she felt she should have won in that category because her song was more crossover than reggae.”

Tyna accepted only the awards she had won earlier and rejected other awards she won after the Crossover category went to Okosun. One of her closest friends and collaborators Charly Boy tells Neusroom she “was really a no nonsense person, she ‘no send’ anybody any message.”

‘Tyna could give the clothes on her back to somebody who needs it’ – Charly Boy.
Photo: Twitter/Areafada1 Designer: Kume Akpubi

Tyna had a penchant for unique fashion styles. In addition to being a musician and style icon, she starred in some Nollywood movies and was also known for her benevolence and support for other artistes. She notably opened the door for Charly Boy’s music career when it refused to take off.

“The most important quality I admire about her was her giving spirit,” he said. “She could give the clothes on her back to somebody who needs it.” Charly Boy’s encounter with Tyna during his visit to Tabansi Records office in Lagos to seek an endorsement deal in the 1990s, changed the fortune of his career.

“I saw her standing in front of Tabansi Records, I think she was waiting for a taxi. I had seen her face in a newspaper once and I couldn’t believe it was the same person I had seen in the newspaper I was seeing live. I wanted to say hello but I was just too shy, and to my surprise, she came and said ‘hello’ and the rest is history and like a puppy I followed her to her house that day.

“I didn’t really have a destination, she was going back home, Tabansi had told me to come back in a month and I didn’t know what next to do, where next to go and I was carrying my 18 months old son because my wife had returned to her country to work. Meeting her, she just restored my confidence and simplified things for me and together we were to plan and tighten the image that is Charly Boy.”

From that moment, their friendship bloomed into what could have led to a marital union, but Charly Boy said it wouldn’t have lasted. “Marrying Tyna wouldn’t have lasted because we were just two lunatics, in a nice way, we love good trouble not negative trouble.”

‘We were able to raise over $80,000 for Tyna’s cancer treatment but it was late,’ Charly Boy.
Photo: Thenetng. Designer: Kume Akpubi.

Tyna later relocated to South Africa where her life took a different turn in the early 2000s and in 2001, she was diagnosed with cancer of the lungs which according to cancer.org, is mostly caused by smoking. She was a chain smoker while she was younger but she later quit the habit. Nwauzor confirmed to Neusroom that Tyna loved her cigarettes. Austin Okeke, a legal practitioner, also described her as a chain smoker in his 2018 article ‘How we got Nigeria to rise to the Challenge’ published in Nigeria In South Africa.

Declan Okpaleke, CNN African Journalist of the Year (1999), who had visited South Africa in 2001 returned to Nigeria to publish the report about Tyna’s ailment. Her hospital photos flooded pages of Nigerian newspapers and other media in 2001 prompting her colleagues to rally support for her and the nation responded overwhelmingly to the call.

Charly Boy said his group was able to raise over $80,000 for Tyna but it was late. “A week after her birthday I just couldn’t take it, so I came back to Nigeria with hopes of raising more money. Three days after I came back, she left.” Tyna is survived by two daughters Camilla and Nigi and a son, Xolani. She knew she was going to die and had prepared for her internment by instructing her father and children to cremate her and her ashes should be in Charly Boy’s possession till he decides to release it to her parents.

“Her ashes were put in a small coffin-like box for me, which I kept in my sitting room and it was there for about a month and a half till I had to let go reluctantly. I gave it to her father so they went to do a proper burial,” he said.
With the tremendous amount of creativity she poured into her brand and the music industry through her talent and style, Tyna continues to be remembered for many things, but her music stands out among them all.