Grace Ifeoma Chikaodili Adichie (nee Odigwe) was born on November 29, 1942 in Umunnachi, Dunukofia LGA. She was the first child of Felix Aro-Nweke and Regina Nwabuodu Odigwe. She spent her early years in Widikum, Cameroon, where her father was a businessman.
In a time when girls were not educated, Aro-Nweke was determined that his first child would receive more than just a perfunctory education. Grace attended Rosary High School, Enugu and Queen of the Rosary College, Onitsha, obtaining her West African School Certificate in 1960.
Her friends called her GC London – “GC” from her name Grace and “London” because she was very good at English. She was known as an excellent netball player, a popular, sociable student and an academic star.
Once her father wrote to her at school and addressed his letter ‘my dear son’. Grace assumed he had made a mistake, while writing in English. When she pointed it out to him, he told her he knew exactly what he had written. “I want you to know that you are everything a son is and you can do what a son can,” her father told her.
She married James Adichie in 1963, a happy union that produced six children. Grace travelled with James to the United States and while he studied for his Ph.D, she began her university education at Merit College in California. With the disruption of the Nigerian-Biafran war upon her return to Nigeria, she finally completed it at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, earning a degree in Sociology and Anthropology.
She began her career as a cabinet officer in the East Central Government of Nigeria, Enugu, in 1972. In 1973, she joined the University of Nigeria, Nsukka as an administrative officer. She rose through the ranks and finally made history when she became the first woman to lead the administration of the university as Registrar.
She served on the governing council of the university and its various committees, the Senate and its many committees, as well as the university’s convocation and congregation. She was named “University of Nigeria Nsukka Best Administrator” in 2002.
After her retirement, she served as a member of the Governing Council, Anambra State University, Uli. Until her death, she was a permanent member of the Anambra State Universal Basic Education Board (ASUBEB), a job that gave her great joy, whether participating in teacher training workshops, overseeing curriculum, or going on school inspections.
She was a devoted mother and grandmother, a loving sister and aunt, a skilled and conscientious administrator, a Lady of Saint Mulumba of the Roman Catholic Church, a warm woman full of love and laughter and wit. She was fun and funny. She had great style – she always dressed beautifully and was known for her beauty, her gorgeous skin that glowed into her older years and her God-given gift of looking much younger than her age. She was a great dancer, and would ‘lead the dance’ (o na-atu ukwe) with the dance groups she belonged to in her younger days.
Mrs. Grace Adichie was generous and large-hearted, helping those in need, often eager to feed everyone. She had a sharp eye that missed nothing, and a sharp tongue that emerged when it was needed. She was a progressive and open-minded thinker, a keen consumer of current affairs and an engaging conversationalist.
She was popularly known as ‘Electric’ because she was very light-skinned, and her friends and acquaintances called her by variants of that nickname: Eleti, Eleti-Oku, Electric-Umuagbala.
Once, during a routine medical check-up in the United States, Grace was told that the doctors had discovered a growth that needed further investigation. Even before she learned that it had turned out to be a false scare, Grace calmly told her daughter, Chimamanda, “I have lived a full and happy life”.
WRITTEN BY CHUKS ADICHIE
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