As a child, Chinelo Iwenofu was smuggled out of war-torn Biafra state in the heat of the Nigerian civil war in an American cargo plane. That was just the beginning of a life of the unpredictable, fun and adventure. At 11, Chinny, as she is fondly called, turned a celebrity in the United Kingdom after winning a writing competition. However, many Nigerians in the UK will remember her more as the immigration lawyer who helped many Nigerian immigrants find their feet in the UK. Chinelo is back in the country. The lawyer-turned-publisher is neck deep in work in Abuja but you will still find her at the golf course and once in a while at a dance floor. Chinelo shares the story of her life, in this interview with PAUL UKPABIO.
Why did you have to leave the country in the middle of the civil war?
I was born in Lagos in 1960. The war started around 1966/1967. From Lagos, we moved back to the east when we were not feeling safe. And I remember vividly going to Onitsha where we stayed with the Ojukwus, and then we went to my mother’s village of Ogidi, then to Aba. We then went to Nkwerre through Uli airport on the floor of a cargo plane, before we finally went to the UK. My father was still living there. He sent for us. All through the war period, we were with my mother, that is my brother Emeka and I. He is now a chemical pathologist in the UK.
We didn’t have to leave Biafra for the UK but we had the opportunity.
Most parents, who could afford it given half the chance, would have sent their children out of the country. My mother was too happy when they ‘conspired’ to send us out of the country. My mother did not follow my brother and I out. She just had a baby, my brother, Victor, and it was thought to be dangerous. We had a guardian called Rose who went with us. We entered a plane without chairs. It was flown by Americans. The cargo plane brought in food stuffs, medicine and ammunition. We took off from Uli or Orlu airport or airstrip. I remember screaming when flying because the plane was being shot at as we flew, until we passed the enemy’s territory. We changed to a normal plane at Sao Tome after spending a night there, on to Lisbon Portugal and spent about a week there. Thereafter, we flew to the UK and the rest is history. We were the fortunate ones who could escape the war through that passage. But we wouldn’t have been fortunate, if the plane had been shot down.
How did you feel when you got to London?
I was so happy to see my dad because I hadn’t seen him for years but I still recognised him. Everybody thinks I look like him. So I was happy and he was also happy to see us alive. We continued our lives there. He was a single parent taking care of his two children and he was a young doctor. Most of the time, he brought people to look after us. At the end, he decided to put us in boarding schools. That was how I ended up in Convent of our Lady, Sussex County. I left there for Middlesex. My dad had bought a big house in Yeading village near Hayes. Before then, we lived in a flat in Kilburn North London. I married prematurely because I met someone and my parents were not happy about it. It was a stormy affair. Afterwards I went back to school, to the university to study law. I was actually trying to get into another university to study Mass Communication. But there was a three-year waiting list and I didn’t want to waste time not doing anything. So I decided to study law.
Did your mum join your dad in England?
No, she didn’t. Though she survived the civil war, she later divorced my dad. My dad married an English woman. I have three siblings who are half English and my mum was hitched to someone else too, Dr. Pius Okigbo, who was a one-time economic adviser to Biafran and other Nigerian governments after that.
During the war, what was the feeling like in the home of the Ojukwus?
I remember two of the Ojukwu children then, Mimi the daughter who was a toddler then since became my friend; she came and stayed a short while with me in London during our adult years, and then Emeka, the son too. We stayed with them because Njideka, Ojukwu’s first wife was my mother’s best friend. We moved from there when Onitsha was about to fall during the civil war. Ojukwu was not around; he was the head of state of Biafra. I remember that there was no fear in Ojukwu’s house and especially among us children maybe because we had food; we didn’t know what was going on out there; we didn’t know about kwashiorkor. There was a whole army battalion protecting the house, nobody could easily come near the house. They had anti-aircraft weapons on the roof.
Where was the house then?
The house was in Onitsha; that was where the family was based. I don’t know where Ojukwu was but I remember seeing him on the black and white television screen of those days.
So after the war, where did the Ojukwu family go to?
They went to Ivory Coast.
When did you see them again?
Around the time I had my first son, Aunty Njide, Ojukwu’s first wife, was in London then in Finchley, North London. She was my godmother, she came to visit me in the hospital and I used to visit her on Sundays too and after that her daughter, Mimi, came to visit me in London; she spent six months with me there. We used to go and visit Mimi’s godfather, Fredrick Forsyth who is a renowned writer and a British man. Mimi moved to the USA. Her mother died a year before Ojukwu died. I went to visit her in Nnewi when they were burying her mother and again when Ikemba himself passed on.
Why did your mum return to Nigeria initially?
I think she would have been in the best position to answer that (laughs). But I think in those days, people went abroad to learn and return to Nigeria to help the country develop, not like these days that people who go and do not even want to return anymore. When my father returned, he was the ninth eye surgeon in the whole of Nigeria. The government was even begging him to return. He was given a good position and made a top senior civil servant. So people went abroad and returned.
It was in my time that I noticed people were running away. Then we had military governments ruling and I was working as an immigration law consultant in the UK, it was more lucrative. I got to meet many Nigerians who didn’t want to return again to their country. They sought for asylum. They were getting arrested; suddenly, the British government introduced visa for Nigerians. You know before, it was not so. Nigerians were no longer adding value. They used to get to UK, train and return. But after a while they were coming in to stay and look for menial jobs. So the respect for Nigerians changed as well. I wondered why some of my people chose to live like dogs in another man’s country. When I returned finally, it wasn’t very comfortable compared to what I was used to, we had more problems, but I told myself ‘you cannot be developing someone else’s country when at the end of the day, they will let you know that you are not one of them.’
Did you get married again?
No, I had two boys. When I left their father, my family in Nigeria said: ‘If you are going back to school, why don’t you leave them here?’ So I left them with my mother and my aunty in Ogidi, they went to school in Onitsha and lived in Nigeria for five years. I used to visit Nigeria minimum twice a year during the holidays because I was always missing them, because they were very young and growing up fast. So in between studies and visiting Nigeria, I got attached to the country so as soon as I was through with my studies I took them back to stay with me in London. They are grown up now and they have been coming and going back to the UK.
You have a big family, how do you get in touch with each other?
My family is a very complicated one but I think I am closer to my mother’s side. We all come together during Christmas most times. We all preferred to come down to Nigeria for Christmas so we go to the village to stay together as one family.
Now you are a publisher, what kind of things do you publish?
I publish books and magazines.
What kind of books?
Well I don’t discriminate; I publish fiction and non-fiction, biographies, government journals and so on. I publish religious books too. But so far, I have done about 12 books and I’m in the process of doing another four. We are not a very old company; we are still trying to get a good grip in Nigeria.
How long have you been into publishing?
Before I started Africagenda Limited, which is my own company, I was the General Manager of Primetime Publishers. It was owned by the former Minister of Aviation, Dr. Kema Chikwe. I worked with her for a year to establish the company but due to some unforeseen circumstances, I had to quit and return to England. Before then, I was a columnist and on the editorial board of Focus Magazine in the United Kingdom. Focus was a magazine for Nigerians in England. However, my first writing job was in 1982 when I worked for Voice Newspaper, which was the first black newspaper in the UK.
Coincidentally, the original editor-in-chief, Flip Fraser, just died a few months ago. He was a Jamaican. I was one of the freelance writers there. Apart from that, I have had a lot of things published. I even wrote poetry when I was younger and I still do as a hobby. But publishing started with Primetime in 2005. I came to Nigeria for one year, after being head-hunted by Dr. Kema Chikwe because, we had worked together before, and so she wanted me to run her business. But it didn’t quite work out totally because she was still engrossed in her political disposition at that time. She was not paying much attention to what we were doing and we were running out of funds. I decided to return to England. But before I left, we managed to do a couple of books there.
Tell us some of the books that you’ve done.
My very first book at Africagenda, my own publishing outfit, was Dr. Ngozi Achebe’s ‘Onaedo – The Blacksmith’s Daughter.’ And I think that is a classic. The book still has a lot of potential; it is still selling very well in America through an American based publisher. They are selling well as e-books through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Various book shops here in Nigeria have complained that they have run out of copies. Now, we have to replenish them, in fact we have to go and print some more because they just disappear off the shelves.
Also, she was shortlisted for the NLNG prize for literature. She will still keep gunning for the NLNG prize. That is a cool hundred thousand dollars. She came second. So we will keep trying until we get the prize. Her writing style is akin to that of the revered writer, Professor Chinua Achebe. Somebody even said it is a superior style to that of the late Professor, who also happens to be her uncle. So that was the book my organisation first published.
It encouraged me to go on and suddenly I was approached to do another one: the official biography of the current President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, which we called ‘Wind Of Hope.’ It took a lot of time, there were so many people involved. They went around interviewing a lot of people. After which it was launched on the 11th of March 2011. It was quite a time and I had to rush to Dubai to go and print the book, arriving at the International Conference Centre venue with the finished books on the morning of the event. The President was there with most of his ministers.
Did you benefit from publishing a book on the President?
That event was good publicity for me because it got me more clients. I did another book on the President just before the election by Ambassador Igali. I also published another book for Governor Liyel Imoke. It was a great success. We celebrated the book presentation in Calabar in 2012. The attendance was good. I got to meet Elderstatesman and former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Bishop David Oyedepo and a lot of other top dignitaries. In between, I did a book for Dr. Eleanor Nwadinobi, who works as consultant for the United Nations; she did a paper on the witchcraft saga in Akwa Ibom State, where there were cases of the killing of children accused of witchcraft.
So we did a book on that. It was enlightening. However, we are yet to launch it. It was an academic work. We also did some work for the Human Rights Commission; it was a journal which is out every year. We did another journal for the SGF last year and so on. I think the second most popular book we have published since Dr. Ngozi Achebe’s book, that is also selling very well, is the book on the Nigerian civil war or the Biafran war. We have begun to sell out in shops in Lagos. Glendora, Terra Kulture and the other popular bookshops have been asking for more. The book was written by Nnamdi Ebo, and it is titled: ‘There Was A Time.’ We launched it at the Yar’adua Centre in Abuja.
It was controversial because people came and asked why the book is called ‘There Was A Time,’ more so when Professor Chinua Achebe had just written a book before his demise called ‘There Was A Country!’ But it was a coincidence apparently because the author had written the book long before There Was A Country came out. So we could not really change the title. There is another gentleman called Reginald Ofodile, a brilliant writer, he is also an actor in UK and a lawyer. He writes books and plays and he also acts on stage and in movies. He did a beautiful novel too that I have published called ‘Thou Shalt Not’ and we are in the process of bringing out another titled ‘Two Singers Are Silenced’. But the book closest to my heart is by my adopted daughter, Eeefy Ike, she is a brand. Her book is called ‘Queen Of Cyberspace’ and contains a plethora of inspirational and motivational anecdotes gleaned from her daily write ups on Facebook over a short period. It has yet to be launched and we are expecting to do so in a big way.
Since publishing came a little later, what were you doing initially?
I actually trained as a lawyer. I graduated in 1987 in England with an LLB Honours degree and then trained as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. But now, I hear it has been changed to the Senior Court of England and Wales and I practised for about 15 years in the UK. I started out as a criminal lawyer and from there, I did other aspects of law and I ended up as an immigration lawyer when there was an influx of immigrants, particularly Nigerians, who needed help. I was looking after so many of them. At some stage, I had over 800 clients on the go. So I did all that but I was writing as a hobby and I eventually started working with Focus magazine.
Which came first, the writing or the law?
Actually, writing started before law. I went to UK when I was nine just as the war was dragging to an end. Over there, my father sent me to a boarding school. He was a medical doctor living alone because my parents were separated and my mother stayed behind in Biafra. On Saturdays we used to go shopping while at boarding school, to buy sweets and other such things. We were in Hastings Sussex, along the coast of the English channel. I used to go and stand on the pier watching the sea. I found it scary, especially in the winter when you just see huge waves, grey everywhere, ugly looking and cold. At that time, we were told about a national poetry competition for children of my age category; my school entered us. So I wrote a poem. I was 11 at the time and suddenly, I was told that I was the winner out of all the primary school entrants in Britain. After I was announced the winner, a group of teachers came to my school and started interrogating me, trying to find out if I truly wrote the wining poem because I was just 11. I told them I did.
They wondered about the end of the poem where I wrote ‘The sea is a thrill, a nightmare, a wonder!’ They thought that line, especially was too sophisticated for an 11-year-old. I told them I wrote it and that I like English language and that it made sense to me. I told them the sea scares me, yet I am attracted to it and sometimes I just wonder about it. That was how writing started for me. When I was 17, I wrote another article that was published in a magazine called Staunch. I remember the publisher and editor-in-chief then was someone called Don Kinch, he was fascinated with my story titled ‘Politics Of Early Childhood.’ That was because I wrote about my experiences in Biafra, how we were children moving from one place to another.
How do you feel now that so much written items are now coming out of the civil war?
Oh, I like it because it seemed to have been hidden. Lots of things about that period were hidden. It seemed like people were afraid to talk about it. There was a time when I came back from the UK. My dad had returned to the country. He was Chief Consultant Ophthalmologist then in the old Anambra State Government, and was posted to Enugu. He was an eye surgeon of great repute. I recall moving around Onitsha and other parts of the east and seeing bullet holes on buildings and all other relics of the war. They were still there in 1977 but now, newer buildings have taken over.
