President Bola Tinubu has condoled with the Okonjo royal family of Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State, on the death of Prof. Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.\n<\/p>\n
She died at the age of 96.\n<\/p>\n
In a statement released on Sunday by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the President described the late scholar as \u201ca champion of women\u2019s empowerment and a revered matriarch\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
Tinubu commiserated with Okonjo-Iweala, other members of the family and the people of Ogwashi-Uku over the loss of \u201ctheir beloved mother, matriarch, and community leader\u201d.<\/p>\n
He described her death as the loss of an accomplished academic whose life was defined by \u201cintellectual distinction, service to humanity, and an enduring commitment to advancing women and society\u201d.<\/p>\n
The President also acknowledged her contributions to scholarship and her example as a woman who combined professional excellence with dedication to family, community and the preservation of traditional institutions.\n<\/p>\n
He prayed that God would grant her eternal rest and comfort the family and all who mourn her.<\/p>\n
Kamene Okonjo was a sociologist known for her research on the political and social roles of Igbo women west of the River Niger. <\/p>\n
Her 1976 essay, The Dual-Sex Political System in Operation: Igbo Women and Community Politics in Midwestern Nigeria, is widely cited in African gender studies.\n<\/p>\n
She also wrote The Role of Women in Social Change among the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria Living West of the River Niger (1980).\n<\/p>\n
She was married to Chukwuka Okonjo, a mathematician and economist who became the Obi of Ogwashi-Uku in 2007.\n<\/p>\n
He died in Lagos on September 13, 2019, at the age of 91.\n<\/p>\n
The couple had seven children, the best known of whom is Okonjo-Iweala, a former two-time Minister of Finance, former World Bank Managing Director and now Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.\n<\/p>\n
In December 2012, gunmen kidnapped the then 82-year-old Okonjo from the family palace in Ogwashi-Uku and held her for five days.<\/p>\n
Okonjo-Iweala, then Finance Minister, later wrote that the kidnappers demanded that she resign and leave the country, and linked the abduction to her stance on fuel subsidy payments.\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
President Bola Tinubu has condoled with the Okonjo royal family of Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State, on the death of Prof. Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}