My mother, who sadly passed away on 25th March 2025

I’ve seen other people do this in the past and felt so bad for them, but never in a million years did I think that I would be doing one of these in 2025 or for many years to come.

Sadly my mother passed away on Tuesday 25th March 2025 following a horrible battle with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer originally misdiagnosed as a hernia and further complicated by her suffering a major stroke as a result of the Palliative Chemo that she was receiving that left her hospitalised for six weeks prior to her death. Sadly in the end, it wasn’t the cancer or the stroke that took her but something else, which I will address and discuss at an appropriate time.

My mother was born in Nigeria to my grandparent - HRH Joseph Onyekwere and First Lady Chinyere Onyekwere on 30th August 1962. She was the eldest of six children, and from an early age took responsibility of caring for her siblings and for her mum (my grandmother) when she took ill. Caring for others was part of who my mum was and it really did feel like her calling, which led her to study Nursing and Midwifery in Nigeria before moving to the UK to settle with my dad and build a family.

Her selflessness, love for God and care for people is something that everybody always commented was some of her admirable traits. Despite her own health stuff going on, she pushed hard to work to feed her family (immediate and extended), and take care of those back home (Nigeria).

She took personal responsibility of caring / nursing for both of her parents in the later age, when they came to London to live with us and sadly they both died while living with us, but keep dignified till their last breath because of the care that my mum took upon herself to give them, on top of still going to work for the NHS, raise young children and look after her extended family in Nigeria.

My mum was a proud Nigerian woman, and was a real example of “You can take the girl out of Nigeria, but you can’t take the Nigerian out of the girl”… Despite living in the UK for over 30 years, she ran our house as a proud Nigerian household. We would have Jollof Rice on a Sunday, Pounded Yam before we went to school to hold us throughout the day, she would speak Igbo to us by force and never compromised on that, she ensured that our culture was something that we were proud off and it is one of the biggest gifts that she’s left me and my siblings.

It makes sense then that one of her wishes was for her body to be repatriated to Nigeria and laid to rest in our village.

The cost of repatriation is exceedingly high considering what it used to be 10 years ago, and the cost of housing a corpse in a hospital mortuary in Nigeria has gone up as well.

While many of you will not have known my mum, and as a relatively private individual; I barely ever spoke or posted about my family on social media.

I am appealing for support from generous souls to help us fulfil my mum’s wish of going home. We had spoken over the last couple of years about visiting Nigeria and it is a shame that her next visit will be one that we lay her to rest, and I only wish that she had been alive to go back with her own feet to see the fruits of her labour but sadly that isn’t the case but nevertheless we want to give her a befitting send off, and I would appreciate any support in helping us do.

The GoFund me page is to raise £15,000 to help with the repatriation costs and the mortuary costs which is a contribution towards as the costs are much higher than this.

Any support and love would be greatly appreciated