Originally christened Lucy Okoruwe, Lucy Jonah’s name changed because of the ugly circumstances that have forced her to remain single till today; yet, she changed her surname to her father’s Christian name because her school “corrupted Okoruwe to Okolie” (Jonah, 2006, p. 34), and many of her schoolmates took her for an Ibo and disparaged her as one of the “Ibos that eat people.” She thought that her name change would have protected her from the tribal epithet ascribed to the Ibos, unknowing that her Ika tribe is known as “Ika that eats snakes” (p. 34).

            Jonah was born in September 1946 in Benin City, Nigeria, and she was educated at Our Lady of Apostle Convent School on Dawson Road, Benin. She is a native of Ekuku-Agbor in Delta State of Nigeria. She was, however, named “‘Amukpumese’ meaning, ‘delivered despite failure to sacrifice’” (Jonah, 2006, p. 14). Amukpumese as a name of the author has an interesting story behind it. Jonah said that her mother narrated to her that when her mother was still carrying her in her womb,

oracle has said she could not have a safe delivery unless she sacrificed a cock to appease the gods. She could not afford the money to buy a cock so she resigned herself to fate. However, Almighty God disputed what the oracle had said and she delivered safely.”  (Jonah, 2006, p. 14)

Jonah’s father, who named her Lucy after a woman he cherished, was “a typical male chauvinist” (Jonah, 2006, p. 19) because he held the view that women are only meant to be married and do their husbands’ bidding. Of course, such a view plunged Lucy Jonah into an early marriage:

My father…asked for a dowry of… (sixty pounds). …took only… (fifty pounds) and said that the balance (ten pounds) should be outstanding as it was not customary to collect the entire dowry from an in-law. He also added that it would not be proper to collect so much from a man who was going to help him educate his daughter. (p. 97)

The said marriage was full of troubles and eventually failed. Her second attempt in marriage also failed because her husband never told her that he already had a wife, and she was abandoned with her daughter (pp. 210-216). Therefore, Jonah herself has come to realize that “marriage is not meant for everybody; it does not have to be their [women’s] only identity” (p.10). Because Jonah eventually succeeded and enjoyed life fortune, her father apologized to her in his late years for not being fair to his daughters (p. 208).

            As a woman with dissatisfied childhood, she had two experiences that have shaped her life. First, she was not a privileged child and has “learnt that to survive means to struggle” (p. 9). Jonah as a child was made to have the notion that her life was prepared solely for marriage, but she saw that all the women in her life felt miserable about their marriages. Second, Jonah saw at her childhood how the primitive lifestyle of many parents—seeing this from her parents’—and lack of adequate support to get health and enlightenment affected so many young children of her youth time. For instance, her sister died of a preventable disease and she could recall that:

Grace [her sister] may not have died if there was proper medical attention. The ‘Chemist’ that treated her for two months or so would have done better to refer her to the General Hospital, which was the only hope of the poor then. Before the death of Grace, my mother had earlier lost a two-week old daughter. Again, I am of the opinion that that child also would have survived with proper medical attention. (pp. 15-16)

Jonah obviously loathes the level of ignorance that was prevalent in her youth about health. She insisted that the ignorance led to the massive death recorded of children who died of ‘measles, malaria, tetanus and other forms of infection” (p. 64) which “were attributed to witchcraft” (p. 64).

            As an intrepid woman, she stood her ground against a soldier’s oppression of those working in her first husband’s hotel, which she was also assisting him to run. Around 1968, when the Civil War was at the zenith, she had to attack the soldier; she “hit him hard in the right eye” (p. 149), and he sustained an injury. She was saved through the intervention of Major Abacha [later Nigeria’s head of state], who was well-known in Agbor then as a very kind and considerate army officer.

She began employment with Exam Success College in 1969 as a proofreader, and she started her own printing and publishing company, Prompt Enterprises Nig, Ltd, in 1978.  She has a daughter and a son, namely Princess Ukoh Mokolo and Tony Jonah respectively.