Rosemary Inyama

Inyama was born on 11 November 1913 to Mazi Okoronkwo Ike and Madam Otonahu Ike in Arochukwu, Igboland, Nigeria.^[1] She attended the Mary Slessor Memorial School, where she later became a teacher. She married fellow teacher P.K. Inyama in 1934 and resigned from formal teaching upon marriage.^[2]

In 1935, Inyama established a Domestic Science and Business Training Centre, which became a profitable enterprise teaching women practical skills for both employment and home management.^[3]

In 1942, she obtained a licence for buying gold and began importing gold from Ghana to create jewellery, becoming one of the first women in her area to hold a bank account, at the African Continental Bank in Aba.^[4] She subsequently entered a trading partnership buying and selling foodstuffs, a business that continued until the Nigerian Civil War (1967 to 1970).^[5]

Inyama founded the Girl Guides in the Arochukwu district and helped establish a motherless babies home in 1965.^[6] During the Nigerian Civil War, she brought together the Ututu, Ihechiowa, Isu, Ewe and Arochukwu communities under the banner of the Association of Arochukwu Women.^[7]

She was a member of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) and organised the women's wing of the party in her district.^[8] She was a successful businesswoman who educated all her children at university and dedicated herself to improving the lives of women in her community, receiving several awards for her service.^[9]

Inyama and her husband P.K. Inyama had four children. Their daughter Hycientha Inyama Nwauba became the Consul-General for Nigeria in New York, United States. Their other children were Nnenna Inyama, Jennifer Inyama and Okoro Inyama.^[10]