"I lost my best friend, I lost control"- Amaka Igwe's daughter pays tribute to her

To God who made me I don’t know how it’s two years today.
Mummy, you’re still not back?
I’m sure my memory will ease me back to a semblance of normalcy, but it won’t ever get there. I relive every hour. From midnight, or just before, from nine pm on the 27th when we had that three-hour call that ended with deathbed type words and prophecies and affirmations from you that I thought nothing of…
…to 8am, when we started our average of 5-8 daily calls (sometimes email) procedure.
That three-hour call was our farewell song. I just didn’t know you were singing. You told me you loved me, and I felt it in every fibre of my being. You told me how proud you were of me. You said you wouldn’t be there on my birthday. We talked about the future, and the future future, and unlike our usual co-daydreams you managed to keep the focus on me and erase yourself carefully out of it.

//

Eight (or so) brief good morning, this-is-what-I’m-up-to calls, all the way to 4pm, when (I think) the 5th or 6th call (who counts when you think they will always come), when you called to check in and make sure I was studying, and give me your location, make me feel jealous all over again because I was the minority, away at school while you were with Dad and the boys…
…And say goodbye for the very last time. It wasn’t even a proper goodbye. ‘I’ll call you back’. Na so.
My spirit knew there was something wrong when you didn’t call at 6pm. Or 8pm. So I call you, and you don’t pick up. To distract myself I launch into a long laugh/chat with a friend, and then panic at 9pm when I talk about you so I remember to call, and you still don’t pick up. More panic. Then I am called to be informed of a very out of the blue out of the way visit. And then I know. Without knowing.
I run with the think horses not zebras approach.
I decide your phone has been stolen, and the robber ate your sim card because he was hungry after executing the crime, or better yet was feeling guilty and decided to use the sim card as the bread component of communion, with freshly tapped palm wine as the other. I decide your battery melted in the hot Udi sun.
I decide you were busy, and would be calling any minute to apologize and pick up where we left off. I prepped my pretend anger voice. I denied what no one but my heart was telling me.
I held out for all kinds of hope. Prayed the craziest prayers. Bargained with God.
That you would wake me up in the morning before my alarm. I believed that so much it was hard getting to sleep that night, I was waiting for the morning to come. Then it was all laid out, and I couldn’t un-know. You were gone. You were gone. You were gone. And you won’t be calling me back.
They don’t have phones where you’ve gone.
Seeing your phone and all your belongings when I got back home infuriated me. Then humbled me. Do not store up earthly treasures… Priorities.
If anything, God should have allowed that phone follow you to heaven, with at least one Ankara outfit, your glasses, that drum, and your gold necklace that you wore forever. A heavenly starter pack, to ease you into your new and improved eternal life. Not so?
Last year I wrote about everything that was supposed to be. I was still very angry at you. Today, I am not that far away from anger, just down the road. Maybe next year I’ll be on a different street.

//

Today is my Ground Zero Plus 2. 2 years ago today, the thing I feared the most happened to me. I lost my best friend; and I lost control. My plans were shredded. The floor vanished under me, and it started to simultaneously rain from the ceiling. I fell, and fell, and fell, and I reached my foundation.
I don’t have precise words for what I feel. It’s never not going to hurt. I miss your full-frontal, spontaneous, in-your-face, fierce love. Sometimes I forget that you are gone, I really do. I have happy moments, with friends and family, I achieve something, I’m surprised, and I receive something undeserved unexpectedly and I reason that I can’t be this happy if you are gone.
Then I look around for you to agree with me and my neck almost goes 360 because you are not here.
Purpose has however never been more important. I feel awake.

You leaving has unlocked latent places in me that I wish never had to exist and come to the fore, but I will make the most of. I feel deeper. I love the ones I love, much harder. I’m less scared, of speaking my mind. I don’t want to leave things left unsaid. I don’t want to leave my life half-lived.
I’m scared more, because I have to think of my future and my future future without you. I don’t quite yet know how to exist in a world that you aren’t in; new phases and whatnot. I feel sometimes like a toddler someone yanked out of her walker.
I can’t comprehend that I won’t see you see me graduate anymore, and become a Barrister, and write much more, and found things, and fulfill my destiny, and get married, have kids, and grand kids… So you mean you really won’t come back?
My imagination cushions the impact. I have you prepping Jesus for a close-up, shooting the trailer for His return, with angels at the monitor, Peter at the camera, Uncle Offor holding the boom and you in the director’s chair yelling, “Aaaction!”
I have you eyeing me when I’m about to say something silly or do something stupid, or when I refuse to eat humble pie and apologize for doing said silly thing. I have you belly laughing in unison, when something I know would make us laugh makes me laugh.
I have you, in a parallel planet, doing the Senior Status LLB like you said you would. I have you dabbing, and thanking God you don’t have to try and krump anymore. I have you virtually hugging me, tightly, bone crushingly; as if to pull all my scattered emotions back into order.

//

I have you in my heart, in a special chamber, helping my heart beat with your drum, your shorts, the vest and a huge smile.
I no longer think I have all the time in the world. But I’m still learning there’s a time for everything. I want to lean in so hard I’m half on the table. And if there’s no table I’m building one. Because life has never been shorter. And because I can.
I love you deep. I love you bottomless. I love you so much it scares me. You used to say you loved me enough for both of us, I didn’t get it. Now, wherever you are, whether you can or can’t love me back, I love you enough for the both of us too. Mamma mia. It’s my turn.
I didn’t know I would still be here, and still be me, but I am. I miss you without words, none are capable of articulating that emotion. Most times it makes me want to curl up in a ball, and not do anything at all. Sometimes, some days, that’s exactly what I do.
But In this weakness I am strong. And it is still well. Nothing else to say or do, but thank God, for my Ground Zero plus 2.

Find out what Nigerians were searching for on Google in May 2014

From the kidnap of over 200 Nigerian school girls in Borno, Mavin Records riveting hit song ‘Dorobucci’ to the death of an accomplished filmmaker in the Nigerian movie industry (Amaka Igwe). Below is Google Top Search Trends in Nigeria for May 2014.

Top Searches

-Dorobucci

-Chibokgirls #bringbackourgirls

-Patience Jonathan

-Jos bomb blast

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-solange, solange knowles

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-champions league final

-Nigeria vs Scotland

-Dora Akunyili health

-Amaka Igwe

Top trending Musicians

-P Square

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Top searched “How to…”

-how to kiss

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Top Searched “What is…”

-what is love

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" I am thankful for the gift you were to me " Read Amaka Igwe’s husband tribute to her

Charles Igwe, the husband of the late movie icon, Amaka Igwe has penned a tribute to her. The established filmmaker would be buried on Friday, 13th June in Imo. A Service of Songs was held for her on Monday, June 9th, 2014 at The Haven Events Centre at GRA Ikeja, Lagos.

“Thank you for the memories… for the joy… for the grace evident in you… the passion for God, for truth, for life, for doing right, for loving, for creating, for giving, for caring, for family, for making memories… and you did make memories, for me, for how children, for family, for the nation, for the world.

I am thankful for the time we had together… and for the gift you were to me and to this world… I am grateful to God for sharing in this world with you… I do know you have peace now, free from the labours of our world, present in the light and majesty of our Lord, for whom you lived and in whom you moved, and had your being.

I will see you again…

We will see you again…

This is to say… I miss you,…our children…they miss you…

We wish we had more time with you…

However,.. I say thank you

My life with you… was An Amazing Life..

Till we meet again…
Charles

Amaka Igwe: Friends, colleagues, Nollywood attend Service of Songs

The Service of Songs for the late movie veteran, Amaka Igwe, who passed away on the 29th of April 2014 was held on June 9th, 2014 at The Haven Events Centre at GRA Ikeja, Lagos.
Roll call of celebrities who came to pay tribute to the Nollywood icon include family, friends, Nollywood practitioners; Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Bukky Ajayi, Wunmi Obe, Olu Jacobs, Kunle Bantefa, Ngozi Nwosu, Seyi Shodimu, Keppy Ekpeyong, Bimbo Akintola, Nobert and Gloria Young, Patrick and Ireti Doyle, Tony Umez, Kanayo .O. Kanayo, Ego Boyo, Ali Baba, Teju Babyface to mention a few.
Amaka will be committed to mother earth on Friday, June 13th, 2014 at Ndiuche Arondizuogu in Imo State.

Amaka Igwe is not dead. |By: Charles Novia

Amaka Igwe lives. The tears we shed for her are futile. She lives. The shock we express over her passing on is carthatic. She lives. Amaka Igwe did not die. She just built her loving ‘house of commotion’ in our hearts. Commotion with co-relation; commotion with emotions.
The brilliant lady who could unarguably be credited as the progenitor of Nollywood as we know it today still lives. Immortalised in our hearts. If there was no ‘Checkmate’, that superb soap opera which had a chart-topping five year run on national television, there would have been no Nollywood. For the tested and trusted actors from ‘Checkmate’ were mostly cast in the trend-setting ‘Living in Bondage’.
Amaka had groomed a new generation of Nigerian actors through ‘Checkmate’, she had prepared our minds for something explosive with her creation. There is yet to emerge a soap opera since then which has all the thrills and frills and popular appeal like ‘Checkmate’. Forget all these tin imitations. Amaka’s soap was solid steel. Unbreakable. Unbeatable. And you say she is dead? But Amaka lives!
She created characters which blew our minds. Anne Harthrope, Segun Kadiri, Chief Fuji, Peaceful Peace, Alika, Akpan, Barry Hughes, Nduka, Bennie etc. She held the nation spell-bound for five years every Thursday 8pm on the network service and gave people gossip points for the next week before the next episode. ‘Checkmate’ was her creation. ‘Checkmate’ was her success. She brilliantly wrote all the episodes, over 500 of them and produced carefully. She was far ahead of her time. The most intriguing thing about her concerning ‘Checkmate’ was that she knew when to pull the plugs. She broke our hearts by resolving the plots and finishing the soap opera on one Thursday evening in 1995.
The country was shocked and mourned. But Amaka was done with the soap. She had checkmated our expectations to see the soap opera run forever. She just knew when to stop. And that last episode of ‘Checkmate’? The best ending I have ever seen in Nigeria for any serial and come to think of it anywhere in the world. It was so brilliant. Amaka ended the plots and sub-plots and showed us all why the serial was titled ‘Checkmate’. Anne Harthrope (played by Ego Boyo who was replaced by someone else for a few months while she was on ‘maternity leave’) married Segun Kadiri ( played by RMD who gave the character a brilliant interpretation with a raspy voice and finger-on-the-cheek affectation) and just as we all sighed that at last the two enemies had fallen in love and tied the knots, Amaka gave us a twist. Anne cleverly ‘divorced’ Segun Kadiri, warning him that she only married him to give her baby a father but that she would never sell or hand over her company to him! The last scene ended with a stupefied Kadiri laughing in shock, knowing he had been ‘checkmated’.
So classic. And that was not all. She brilliantly had the cast talk to the viewers before the end credits in scripted lines about how the soap opera made its run. That episode was so good and popular that NTA Network had a re-run of it the next week. On the set of ‘Violated’ in 1996 ( her post-‘Checkmate’ opus in which I was cast as Jide, the banker) she told me how agonising it was to write that final episode. ‘I was pregnant then and I would write and discard. I can’t count how many scripts of that final episode I wrote and tore. The denouement just was not clicking. Then, finally I got the muse. And I just kept scribbling on my bed. When I finished I was so happy and screamed out to Charles (her husband) ‘Honey, I got it!’ and we both screamed and hugged ourselves!’ That piece of information stuck on my mind.
But Amaka is not dead. With enduring works such as ‘Violated’ (which re-defined and triggered the romantic drama genre in Nollywood) ‘Rattlesnake’, ‘To live again’, ‘Forever’ and ‘Fuji House of Commotion’ , how could she be dead? This lady who has been the subject of various dissertations and academic theses changed our creative landscape. Her contributions to the creative industry cannot be quantified. She was an advocate for professionalism. She was a stickler for excellence. A cerebral contributor to Nollywood’s trudge of progress. She wanted what was best for the industry. She was behind the founding of the Movie Practitioners Council of Nigeria bill (MOPICON) which has been gathering dust at the National Assembly for years.
That bill is supposed to be to Nollywood what NBA is to the Lawyers and NMA to the Doctors. Amaka wanted this bill passed. Could our fractured Nollywood please unite to ensure that this is done if only to honour and immortalise her? Thank God she got a National Honour from President Jonathan a couple of years back. An MFR. A well-deserved national honour for an Amazon of Nollywood. She believed in young talents and had an open door policy for any talent who came to her office. She had an academy too, where young and ambitious filmmakers were trained.
What about her film and television bi-ennial festival in Abuja; Best of the Best (BOB) TV? Or her radio station, Top FM? Or her painstaking contributions to the committee set up to give guidelines for the 3 billion naira grant given to Nollywood by the President? She fought tirelessly for the industry to maximally benefit from the grant. And with all these achievements, you say Amaka Igwe is dead? No, she lives. Her footprints on the sands of achievement on the beaches of our creative economy are there for all to see. Too large to fill.
Credit: Charlesnoviadaily.com

Amaka Igwe's husband on how she died.

Charles Igwe, the husband of the late movie icon, Amaka Igwe during a condolence visit by delegates from the National Executive of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP) narrated how his wife died. He also added that she would have still been alive if doctors at the hospital she was rushed to were not on strike.
“We were in Enugu preparing for her new soap, and Amaka was taking some of the people through acting when she had an asthma attack. After using inhaler without success, she was taken to a nearby hospital, but we were told that the doctor was not around. We then went to the teaching hospital in Enugu, where we were again told that the doctors were on strike. It was while we were taking her to another hospital that she died.”
May her soul find repose!!!

Amaka Igwe: Nigerian celebrities pay tribute

Nigerian celebrities, mostly Nollywood stars/colleagues/proteges have taken to their social media accounts to pay tribute to the late veteran film-maker and writer, Amaka Igwe, who passed on two days ago shortly after an asthma attack.

Genevieve Nnaji: “This is the darkest day of my entire career. That I believe sums up how I feel right now. Your legacy will leave on Aunty Amaka. I promise you. #RIPAmakaIgwe

Stephanie Okereke: “I’m still in shock! Oh! How we’ve lost a great one! Rest in Peace Amaka Igwe.

Joseph Benjamin: Amaka Igwe passes on. It is appointed to man. Wt will you be remembered for, She positively affected her generation

Susan Peters: “Another Icon gone too soon! RIP Amaka Igwe! Sad News!

Stella Damasus: “RIP aunty Amaka. I just can’t understand this. Too painful to even begin to think about it. My prayer goes out to uncle charles and the children.”

Kate Henshaw: “Some die, Some are born! That’s life..its a cycle. Aunty Amaka Igwe, rest in peace..
Desmond Elliot: “Anty Amaka will be greatly missed. Our condolences go to Uncle Charles and the family, R.I.P great woman. Very shocking indeed.


Rita Dominic: “your body of work will be an inspiration to many generation. Adieu Aunty Amaka till we meet to part no more.”

Don Pedro Obaseki: “Tears rain down. Rest in Peace, Great Amazon. Rest. We Won’t Miss you, because everywhere we turn in Nollywood, we see you! We feel you, Amaka! I remain your friend, even in the afterlife!”

Lala Akindoju: We’ve lost an icon..A teacher. .she taught everything I know about acting for screen. I had never heard of method acting till I met Amaka Igwe. .this is hard..very hard #gonetoosoon


Charles Novia: She guided me, as with many others, at the infancy of my career to what I have become in Film business. A confidant gone. R.I.P


Uche Jombo: Sad sad sad day, my prayers are with her family.RIP amaka igwe.God knows Why. #veteranFilmMaker #nollywoodGreat –

Biola Alabi: I am terribly saddened to learn of the sudden passing away of Aunty Amaka Igwe, she was a true storyteller and an entertainment mogul RIP

Julius Agwu: Death visits the wrong home at the wrong time and snatches the wrong person ?#AmakaIgwe
Funmilola Iyanda: I am very sad to hear Amaka Igwe has died. She’s left us with a great creative legacy so she lives on. My prayers r with charles n children.


John Njamah: WORDS are not ENOUGH to say GOODBYE to this AWESOME WOMAN that CARVED MY YESTERDAY and DEFINED MY TODAY AS A FILM MAKER.. Farewell MRS

Chika Chukwu: My friend, Sister &the woman who gave me my best character in a TV series 7yrs running – the amazing Amaka Igwe has passed away, RIP Sis. – Chika Chukwu


Daniel Ademinokan: RIP Amaka Igwe! One of Nigeria’s media Icons. Gone too soon! #gonetoosoon #RIP


Ayo Shonaiya: Sad news. One of the people I respect the most in Nigeria just passed away. RIP AMAKA IGWE. God be with your soul.

Obi Emelonye: A giant has fallen but your lagacy lives on. Rest in peace my sister. And may God grant your family, particularly my brother Charles, the fortitude to bear this tragic loss. – Obi Emelonye

Ace film-maker, Amaka Igwe passes on

 
The Nigerian movie industry has lost one of its biggest stakeholders. Prolific filmmaker and producer of popular TV soaps, Checkmate and Fuji House of Commotion, Amaka Igwe has passed on. She died last night, April 28, 2014 shortly after an asthma attack.
The award-winning scriptwriter who hails from Obinagu, Enugu, Nigeria is survived by her husband and kids. She was aged 51.
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