Biography
Background, Childhood and Education
Stella Nwocha Nwokoro was born in Zaria on March 31, 1938, to the respected Aro thought leader, Mazi Solomon Walton Okereke of the Okereke Brothers business group, and Aro-Mballa, Isuochi, and Madam Cecilia Mgbeke Okereke, nee Chukwu, of Umukpaleke, Mballa, Isuochi. She regularly told fond stories of her childhood and her interactions with her siblings, some of which were about when she, along with her brother Mazi Mike Okereke, excitedly jogged behind their father on their first day to elementary school and the delicious snack they shared for lunch, and the gift of mangoes she got from her late elder brother Mazi Silas the first time she met him at their uncle, dede Aaron’s place in Port Harcourt. She also spoke warmly about the rigorous discipline they were subjected to by their parents, uncles, and aunts to ensure they turned out well. Even in her childhood, Madam Stella was very caring, compassionate, nurturing and methodical, far beyond her years. She readily looked out for her mother and siblings, standing up for them and freely expressing generosity to them. These attributes of hers motivated her family to fondly call her “Nnenne”.
In 1944 Madam Stella’s father enrolled her at St George’s primary school in Zaria where she received her first school leaving certificate and thereafter proceeded to the first secondary school for girls in northern Nigeria, the acclaimed Queen of Apostles College, Kakuri, Kaduna, where she sat for and passed the Cambridge “O” level examinations with excellent results. Not being content with just an “O” level certificate which at that time was by itself a guarantee of a good “oru bekee” that would lead to the attainment of the prestigious “senior service” or “manager” status in the public service or the big British or French – owned trading companies, she determined to build a professional career, and, impressed by the uniform, empathy and carriage of the nurses who took care of her on the occasions when she was taken to hospital to treat an ailment, elected to join that noble profession and subsequently enrolled at the School of Nursing, University College Hospital, Ibadan (UCH) where she qualified as a State Registered Nurse (SRN) in 1961 in flying colours. Upon graduation, she was retained at UCH, where she worked in the Accident and Emergency Ward. Having acquired some practical experience from that work schedule, she decided to consolidate in the profession and so obtained a scholarship to train as a midwife at the Southmead Hospital of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. She completed that programme and was certified as a chartered midwife in 1963. The hospital was impressed by her work ethic and offered her a job, but she declined to stay back in that country, as, having been brought up to appreciate the importance of family life for a woman, she had previously committed to return to Nigeria to get married to her fiancé. She arrived back in Nigeria and settled in with her parents in Port Harcourt, where she was employed at the Shell Petroleum hospital.
Marriage, Family and Career
Before proceeding to UCH, Madam Stella had begun considering marriage. Being so comely, she had a myriad of suitors but settled for her late husband, Tom Ogbonnaya Nwokoro, who was also of Aro-Mballa stock and an alumnus of the renowned Okirika Grammar School with a promising career at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) ahead of him. Their traditional marriage ceremony – “ibu mmanyi” – took place in July 1964 in Aro-Mballa, while the Christian ceremony was held at Banham methodist church in Port Harcourt in December 1964.
After her marriage, Madam Stella moved to Lagos to set up a family with her husband and had her first child, Chiji, shortly thereafter. She had to self-learn to combine the roles of wife, home maker, mother and working professional and successfully and consistently deployed this skill as her family grew with the birth of four other children – Osondu, Ama, Oluchi and Ebuka – while her career also progressed at her places of employment at the Apapa health centre of the Lagos State Health Management Board and the NPA medical centres in Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Madam Stella joined the medical department of the NPA at its inception in 1974 as a pioneer Nursing Sister. Even though her primary assignment was at the Apapa quays clinic, she was involved in designing the governing work structure and processes for nursing care and management for the new department. In 1978, she was transferred to Port Harcourt to help establish a clinic there, as staff of the NPA were making do with the medical facilities of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, which were quite inadequate. Guided by the work blueprint that she had developed and implemented earlier at the Apapa quays, she successfully set up and managed the nursing unit of the Port Harcourt clinic from the ground up until 1987, when she had attained the work level of Matron and was moved back to Lagos, where she retired meritoriously in 1996 as Executive Nurse Administrator after twenty-six years of service.
Madam Stella’s success at home management is borne out by the fact that she had a very happy marriage, which was often referenced as a model by extended family members and marriage counsellors. She was a contented woman who freely gave up desires for the trappings of the good life to live a God – disciplined and ordered life, made her home a haven of peace, and never had a harsh word for her husband, who in turn loved and cherished her greatly. She and her late husband inculcated the fear of God, respect, integrity, and the value of hard work in their children, who have all gone on to attain multiple academic and professional qualifications and accomplishments in estate management, construction management, project management, customer management, finance, accounting, media and communications, industrial security, data analytics, law, public policy management consulting, and social work. The children have also successfully established their own families and, between them, have begotten eight offspring.
🕊 Walk with God
In 1971, Madam Stella received an express instruction that was dropped in her mind, apparently by God, to start attending the Assemblies of God church on Amore Street, Olodi – Apapa, Lagos, which was along the way of her regular commute. She initially declined but eventually relented, shortly thereafter accepting the Lordship of Jesus Christ and His offer of salvation, which she guarded with “fear and trembling” as enjoined in Philippians 2:12, up till her demise. Madam Stella was a very committed member of the church for fifty-four years, worshipping mainly in three parishes during this period – Amore and Ojodu in Lagos and Aggrey Road in Port Harcourt – and always serving on their leadership councils. She was instrumental to the establishment of the Amuvi branch of the church in the late 1970s and early 1980s through donations in cash and kind to the project and the ministers, inevitably worshipping there when she returned home every Christmas with her family. In all her parishes of residence, she was very active in the welfare, evangelism, prison and deliverance ministries such that she quietly sponsored a good number of children and youth from indigent homes to primary, secondary and theology school, regularly supported soup kitchens and mentored a good number of new converts to maturity in the faith. At Aggrey Road, she was a member of a band of ministers who regularly went to remote, riverine communities to pull down idol shrines and exorcise devils from the family homes and properties of troubled church members. Madam Stella’s walk with God was so true and real that persons of unsound mind, on sighting her, would regularly loudly proclaim her good standing with God and His acceptance of her prayers, much like the case of the slave girl with the spirit of divination and Paul and Silas in Acts 16:16-18; and the disruptive ones, upon her admonition, would instantly become tranquil, just like the mad man of Gadara at the rebuke of Jesus in Mark 5:1-15.
Madam Stella was the quintessence of a praying woman, constantly sought out for intercession by persons in need of divine intervention in various aspects of their lives; there are ample private testimonies by the beneficiaries of such interventions – “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 15: 16). Also, she was indeed the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31: her husband safely trusted in her as she would only do him good and not evil; he praised her effusively; her children called her blessed; in her tongue was the law of kindness; she reached forth her hands to the needy.
Demise
Madam Stella lived out her retirement in peace and fulfillment, but as time went on, she had ailments that are associated with advancement in age, which were largely contained until the 3rd of March, about one month before her 87th birthday, when she passed away. Deserving of special acknowledgement and thanks here is the kindly gentleman-geriatrician, Dr. Nelson Akumah, an absolute adherent to the Hippocratic oath, who tended to her in the last six years of her life with a level of diligence and expertise that is scarcely seen. May He Who Owes No One amply reward him for his act of grace.
Madam Stella lived a satisfied life of absolute service to her family, humanity, the church, and God. She fought the good fight of the faith as a true Christian soldier and has been duly called to her eternal reward by the Everlasting King. Those who survived her are gratified by her memory, which will guide them through the rest of their sojourns here on earth.
