Oliver de Coque, Ogene music exponent, dies
By SAMUEL OLATUNJI
Sunday, June 22, 2008

Death seems to be having a feast on Nigerian musicians as highlife maestro Oliver de Coque on Friday joined the growing list of dead musicians in recent times. Oliver de Coque who was crowned king of highlife music by Alaafin of Oyo in 1994 joined Sammy Needle, Steve Rhodes and Sunny Okosun who died recently.

Oliver de Coque died at a private hospital on Friday about 5pm of health issues related to cardiac arrest. He was rushed to the hospital by 2pm after he complained of dizziness and three hours later the Anambra-born highlife musician gave up the ghost.

Oliver de Coque during his lifetime was an accomplished musician who became popular with his brand of highlife. He started playing music in 1974 after he learnt how to play guitar from Piccolo and he has about 86 albums to his credit. He played a major role during civil war playing music for the Biafran soldiers.

What makes his death pathetic is that his mother’s corpse is still in the morgue. She died sometimes ago and has since been deposited in the mortuary because Oliver was planning to finish the house he was building in his village.

He shot to limelight in 1979 when he released People’s Club Ka anyi bili be ndu (People’s Club let us enjoy ourselves). The album was said to have sold over 2 million copies at the time. Among his hits are Funny Funny Identity, Ugbana, Easter Special, Ana enwe obodo enwe, and a couple of others. Messiah his first album was released in 1974.

He will be remembered for his praise singing and unique voice, and his shinning bears. His image loomed large across the nation and even beyond. His popularity was not in doubt such that so many people thought he was a Cameroonia. Oliver who got married at the age of 20 is survived by children and grand-children.

Former Senate President, Senator Evan Enwerem, passed away yesterday in Abuja at the age of 71. He would have been 72 on October 29, this year.
Enwerem died at the National Hospital, Abuja, where he had been on admission for over a week.
Enwerem was a life member of Peoples club of nigeria.

Director of Clinical Services at the Hospital, Dr. Patience Ahmed, told newsmen yesterday that Enwerem died in the early hours of the day.
She, however, did not disclose the cause of death.
THISDAY gathered that his relations had made arrangements to fly him to Germany for further medical treatment, but the management of the National Hospital had initially refused to accede to their request because of his condition.
It was learnt that due to their persistence, he was released to them Wednesday night, but the airline, which was expected to fly him refused to have him on board as a result of his condition that had become “very critical”.
Only Lufthansa Airlines flies Abuja to Germany.
He was returned to the hospital where he died about 8 a.m. yesterday.
His wife and children who are abroad, as learnt yesterday, are expected in the country today
Because the family members were outside the country, a formal announcement of his death was yet to be made.
The Office of the Senate President, Senator David Mark, has already been informed of the incident, but has decided to allow the family to formally break the news to Nigerians.
The former governor of Imo State in the ill-fated Third Republic was born on October 29, 1935.
He obtained a Bachelors Degree in Law from the University of Southampton, Britain.
He was chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority between 1980 and 1983 and was elected governor of Imo State in 1991.
In 1999, he won election into the Senate to represent Owerri Senatorial zone and became the first Senate President in the Fourth Republic Senate.
Enwerem, who was fondly addressed as “mature” because of the mature way he handled political issues, had become Senate President at the expense of the late Senator Chuba Okadigbo on June 3, 1999.
The former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had backed his candidature and had deployed the Federal Government machinery to secure the votes of Senators of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All Peoples Party (APP) now All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) for him.
With Senators of the two opposition parties voting en-bloc for him, Enwerem had emerged victorious, having got substantial votes from the PDP Senators. He had scored 66 votes as against Okadigbo’s 43 votes.
But he did not survive in the office beyond November 18, 1999 when the Okadigbo camp succeeded in ousting him from office. A Senate Committee had investigated him for alleged perjury.
It was alleged that he falsified his name such that there was controversy as to whether he was Evan or Evans.
When Okadigbo who succeeded him was removed on August 8, 2000, Enwerem had also expressed interest in returning to the office. He had, however, withdrawn from the race for Senator Adolphus Wabara at the shadow election conducted by PDP Senators in Senate Hearing Room One.
While in the Senate from 1999 to 2003, Enwerem’s professed legislative interest was in the passage of good laws “whose ripple effects on the populace would be wide, sweeping and enduring.”
Politicians have been reacting to the death of the former Senate President. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. (Mrs.) Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, expressed shock over the “sudden death”.
The Speaker described the former Senate president as a consummate democrat in a press statement issued by her Special Adviser (Media), Mrs Funke Egbemode.
His brief tenure as governor of Imo State, she said, witnessed landmarks achievement, and his death “would leave a gaping hole in the nation’s legislative history.”
The late politician, she said, exhibited large heart and political maturity in the face of political tribulations, and advocated that such character disposition should be emulated by politicians and emerging leaders.

Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, 71, titan of highlife music
By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Los Angeles Times | May 20, 2007

LOS ANGELES -- Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, a titan of the African popular music known as highlife whose 1984 "Osondi Owendi" was the biggest-selling record in the history of his native Nigeria, has died. He was 71.

Chief Osadebe was a member of Peoples club of Nigeria.


Osadebe died May 11 of lung failure at St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury, Conn.

"In Nigeria he's loved not only by one ethnic group but by all the ethnic groups," said Nnamdi Moweta, Mr. Osadebe's manager and the host of Radio Afrodicia in Los Angeles. "When you live in a country like Nigeria . . . people go through a lot to survive, and we look for avenues to soothe this daily pain that we go through. His music played a very important role."

In the United States, Nigerian performers King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuti are better known. But in Nigeria, Mr. Osadebe had a long history of hit records. Fans there referred to him as the "Doctor of Hypertension," a reference to the healing power of his music.

That joyous, celebratory music is highlife, the juncture where high-society bands and traditional African rhythms and idioms meet. Although Mr. Osadebe did not create highlife -- it was born in Ghana -- he reinvented it by adding the sounds of merengue and rumba, said Moweta, who co produced four of Mr. Osadebe's albums.

In 2001, Village Voice writer Milo Miles compared Nigerian highlife music to the "fire-in-restraint" sound of the acclaimed Cuban group Buena Vista Social Club, and Mr. Osadebe to its late vocalist, Ibrahim Ferrer.

"Particularly on 'Kedu America,' Osadebe's voice rustles with the parchment charm beloved in Ibrahim Ferrer," Miles wrote.

Mr. Osadebe wrote more than 500 songs and prided himself on being a composer of music and lyrics. "My own belief is that if you cannot compose your song, you are not worth being a musician," he said in a 2004 interview with the Sun News, a Nigerian tabloid.

Born in 1936 in eastern Nigeria, Mr. Osadebe was a chorister in his church as a boy, played in the school band, and was interested in classical music.

"The man who mainly inspired me into singing was the late [Nat King] Cole, an American," Mr. Osadebe said in the Sun News article. "He sang in English, Spanish, and other languages. I loved his music."

Throughout his decades-long career, Mr. Osadebe recorded in English, pidgin English, and Ibo, the language of his ethnic group. He found national success in 1958 with his recording "Adamma," a tribute to a beautiful woman.

Mr. Osadebe leaves five wives and several children, many of whom live in the United States.