Adieu Amaka: ‘Fish bone’ who became a colossus

One of Nigeria’s most celebrated producers, writers and directors, Amaka Igwe, succumbed to asthma on Tuesday at 51, sending the motion picture industry into sorrow and tears.

But the world will remember her more for the victories she recorded in movie-making than the defeat she suffered in the hands of the respiratory disease which affects 300 million people worldwide, resulting in 250,000 deaths yearly ─ or nearly one in 100 sufferers.

Nicknamed ‘fish bone’ (“Ogwu Azu”) as a kid because of her tiny frame, Amaka began to gain weight, even to the point of obesity, after having her first child.

She will be remembered as the creator of Checkmate, one of the most successful TV soaps ever, and Violated, a home movie that dominated its era.

But it is her creation, Fuji House of Commotion ─ which used to be a subplot in Checkmate ─ that often brought humour and relief to millions of homes across the country year after year.

She reportedly died on the set of a movie she was producing in Enugu but there is yet no official confirmation of the incident.

She was originally Amaka Ene, having been born to Isaac Ene, a retired civil engineer from Obinagu-Udi in Enugu State.

Her father nicknamed her GOC ─ short for General Officer Commanding in the military ─ apparently because of her leadership qualities as a kid, and this was no flattery.

As an A Level student at the Idia College, Benin City, she was already organising house variety shows and making money from them as she charged the audience gate fees.

She studied Education and Religious Study at the then University of Ife, even when she would have preferred Law, and got a Master’s in Library and Information Services at the University of Ibadan.

After her national youth service, she developed interest in TV at the Enugu State Broadcasting Service, where Basi and Company and the New Masquerade were produced, she would later get inspired to conceive Checkmate after watching a massive soap opera, Mirror in the Sun, in the early 1980s.

She was married to Charles Igwe.