Kamene Okonjo

Kamene Okonjo died on Friday 23 October 2026, aged 96. The death was announced on Sunday 25 October in a statement by Prince Ifeakanachukwu Emordi, the palace secretary of Ogwashi-Uku, on behalf of the royal family, and reported by Leadership, The Nation and The Guardian Nigeria. The statement said the family took comfort in its Christian faith. The cause and place of death and funeral arrangements were not announced.

Kamene Okonjo became the wife of Chukwuka Okonjo, a scholar from the royal family of Ogwashi-Uku in present day Delta State. The palace said they shared 66 years of marriage. Her husband became a professor of mathematics and economics and, in later life, the Obi of Ogwashi-Uku, the traditional ruler of the kingdom. Details of her own birth and early schooling were not given in the reports of her death.

Okonjo built her career as a sociologist and spent much of it at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from which she retired as a professor. Nigerian press reports describe her as the country's first female professor of sociology, at a time when few women held senior academic posts.

Her best known work is her essay on the dual political system of Igbo women and men in Midwestern Nigeria, published in Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, edited by Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay (1976). It described how Igbo communities west of the Niger gave women their own institutions of authority alongside those of men, and it became a standard reference in African history and women's studies. The royal family's statement praised her outstanding academic accomplishments and her lifelong advocacy for women's rights and empowerment.

As the wife of the Obi, Okonjo held the place of queen mother in Ogwashi-Uku and was regarded as the matriarch of the Umu Obi Obahai royal family. Her children include Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's former finance minister and Director General of the World Trade Organization, Njideka Okonjo-Udochi, Onyema Okonjo, Chichi Okonjo and Ifechukwude Anishi Okonjo II, who succeeded his father as Obi.

In December 2012 armed men abducted her from the family home in Ogwashi-Uku. She was released after several days in captivity. Her daughter, then finance minister, later wrote that the kidnappers had demanded her resignation and connected the crime to her efforts against fraud in the fuel subsidy programme.

The royal family said she leaves behind a legacy of scholarship, service, family values and advocacy for the dignity and advancement of women, and that her achievements earned respect in academic circles well beyond Ogwashi-Uku and Nigeria. Her account of Igbo women's political institutions continues to be read and cited by historians and scholars of gender in Africa.