Nigerian filmmaker, Onyeka Nwelue has sparked mixed reactions on social media after sharing his impressions about eating food at other people’s funerals.
Item 13, has become a part and parcel of funerals in Africa, and families who organize the burial ceremony for their loved ones factor food and refreshments for their guests.
In Nwelue’s view, anybody who drinks and eats at a funeral does not have a conscience. His assertion was vehemently opposed by most Instagram users.
See some reactions below;
Ụmụada just left the whatsapp group ??.. Those ones that will even request for a big loaf of bread and tea ??
amahcah
No mind them to think that people ate amala and goat meat when my Dad died ????
seweetestmori
No be for Yoruba funeral, nobody go tell you before you drag amala and ewedu ?????
ojuolape866
That’s why I love my Muslim brothers, they have the simplest funerals ever.
abujasextoyshop
So we should waste the food? the grieving family will now waste their money cooking food no one would eat. Haaa they won’t like that o
commonmanblog
Some people will eat at a funeral and still carry take away as if they were praying for the person to die
jessicabae2010
So the food they cooked should waste? Nna burial rice taste dey different sha
mzcyhdi
Onyeka Nwelue (born 31 January 1988) is a Nigerian filmmaker, publisher, talk-show host, bookseller and author whose book Hip-Hop is Only for Children won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards. He adapted his novella Island of Happiness into an Igbo-language film, Agwaetiti Obiụtọ, which won Best Feature Film by a Director at the 2018 Newark International Film Festival and went on to be nominated for Best First Feature Film by a Director and the Ousmane Sembene Award for Best Film in an African Language at the 2018 Africa Movie Academy Awards. Island of Happiness was inspired by true events in Oguta. Nwelue is the founder of La Cave Musik, a record label based in Paris, France, and co-founded the UK-based publishing house Abibiman Publishing.
Nwelue studied Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and earned a scholarship to study Directing at the Prague Film School in Czech Republic.
He is currently a visiting assistant professor and Visiting Fellow of African Literature and studies in the English Language Department of the Faculty of Humanities, Manipur University in Imphal, India. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies, Ohio University, where he spent time in Athens, Ohio.
His second novel, The Beginning of Everything Colourful, was shortlisted for the ANA Prose Fiction Prize in 2018, and his collection of poetry, The Lagos Cuban Jazz Club, was shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in the same year.
Nwelue is a Visiting Fellow (Academic Visitor) at the University of Oxford.
He is the founder of Oxford-based James Currey Society, which administers The James Currey Prize for African Literature and The James Currey Fellowship, in cooperation with African Studies Centre at University of Oxford.
Onyeka Nwelue was born in Ezeoke Nsu in Ehime Mbano in Imo State, Nigeria, to Honourable Sam Nwelue, a politician and Knight of St. Christopher, and Lady Catherine Nwelue, a teacher and Lay Reader.
Born into an upper-class family, he is the fourth of six children to his parents. His mother, raised in the aristocratic family of Obua Ajukwu (Ndanike), of Oguta, is cousin to Flora Nwapa, often regarded as the first African female writer to be published internationally.
His grandparents are Origbudu SBC Obiora and Ogbuefi Odiso Obiora (née Nwakuche and eldest sister to Mr Gogo Nwakuche, Nwapa’s second husband. His aunt, Professor Leslye Obiora, was Nigeria’s former Minister of Mines and Steel.
Nwelue left for Lagos when he was 16 years old to attend the Wole Soyinka Festival, after which he was introduced to the Nobel Laureate. A few years later, Nwelue travelled to India for the 2nd International Writers’ Festival, at the invitation of the India Cultural Association. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka remains one of Nwelue’s fans. “He has read everything I have published,” Nwelue says. He has organized private screenings of his films for Soyinka.
Nwelue also identifies as a feminist; in an interview, after making The House of Nwapa, he said: “I made The House of Nwapa, because I am a feminist. I believe we are all equal.”
Early in his career, Nwelue wrote for The Guardian in Nigeria, a rare opportunity given to him by Jahman Anikulapo, the then Editor of Sunday edition popularly known as The Guardian on Sunday.
Nwelue is represented by literary agent Priya Doraswamy of Lotus Lane Literary Agency, based in New Jersey. In 2012, Debbie Edwards of Debbie Edwards Talent Management, became his manager.
