Twenty years might be a long period, yet for those who knew her or admired late Nigeria’s First Lady from afar, the name Stella Obasanjo still rings a bell with class, with compassion. It is 20 years now since she died on that ill-fated October 23 morning in 2005, but her fragrance lingers on, just like a rose that will never wither in the garden of memory.
She was more than wife of a president; she was the embodiment of grace at a moment when Nigeria was reinventing democracy. Stella Abebe Obasanjo, born 14 November 1945 at Iruekpen, Edo State, existed with the quiet fire of a woman destined for greatness. A daughter of the renowned Dr Christopher Abebe, UAC’s first Nigerian chairman, Stella dripped dignity like royalty. She was gorgeous, articulate, and passionately brilliant.
Between 1999 and 2005, Stella warmed the corridors of the Aso Rock. Villa in Abuja. As her husband struggled with the burden of nationhood, she championed the course of the easily forgotten — the orphans, the disabled, the underprivileged. Through the Child Care Trust (CCT), she gave children with special needs a reason to smile, a home to belong to, and a dream to hold on to.
She fought silently but defiantly against the plague of female genital mutilation, struggled for the empowerment of women, and lent her name to courses many would rather ignore. Her empathy was reminiscent of Princess Diana, the “People’s Princess,” whose heart beat for humanity. Like America’s Eleanor Roosevelt, Stella felt power had to have a human face.
Stella’s story was not without thorns. Life, as it has a tendency to do, wrote its final chapter in tragedy, a failed cosmetic procedure in Spain that silenced her laughter at just 59. But if death took her body, it could not steal her light. Even today, the foundation she created continues to ring with her vision. At the 20th Memorial Service in Abeokuta, her husband, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, described her as “a life worth celebrating”, and her brother recalled how her peaceful nature calmed storms within the family.
In a way, Stella was Nigeria’s candle in the wind burning briefly, but shining deeply. She was what former South African First Lady Graca Machel called “a woman who wears empathy like jewellery.” She was a blend of beauty and brain, charm and charity, duty and devotion.
If Stella were to look at Nigeria today, would she be smiling at the way women are shattering glass ceilings, pilots to parliamentarians, entrepreneurs to engineers? Or would she shed silent tears for the children still begging in the streets, the physically challenged still excluded by the system she tried to transform?
Her death left a gap in the nation’s moral conscience, but her memory is a gentle reminder that greatness is not in the length of our years, but in the profundity of our impression on others. She taught us that power comes and goes, but that kindness remains.
Stella’s name stands alongside the world’s great women of influence — Ghana’s Rebecca Akufo-Addo, Tanzania’s Mama Maria Nyerere, or America’s Michelle Obama, women who understood that leadership begins with love. She carried herself with the subdued elegance of a queen and the modesty of a mother.
Published on November 1, 2025
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