MIAMI -- Portia Ogbu-McNair, a Nigerian princess who had a successful career as an entertainer, has died of complications from malaria. She was 40.
Her funeral is scheduled Saturday at the Church of the Incarnation in Miami, and her ashes will be returned to Nigeria. Ogbu-McNair died Sept. 25 at Jackson Memorial Hospital. She was the daughter of the chief of Nigeria's Idoma tribe.
About 60 percent of Nigeria's population is divided among three major tribes, with several hundred smaller tribes making up the rest. The Idoma are among the largest of the smaller tribes, said Ogbu-McNair's husband, Joseph McNair, an education professor at Miami-Dade Community College.
Her father, Dr. Edwin Ogebe Ogbu, was Nigeria's ambassador to the United Nations. Her mother, Mildred Ogbu, is a Bahamian-American from Delray Beach who met Edwin Ogbu while he was attending college in the United States.
Ogbu-McNair attended school in Nigeria and in London. She studied theater and graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 1973 with a bachelor's degree in fine arts.
She was a member of a jazz group led by her first husband, Copeland Davis, and performed in numerous plays and musical comedies in Florida.
Ogbu-McNair returned to Nigeria in 1983 and became a popular entertainer there. She met McNair while he was teaching at Ahamadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria.
The couple returned to south Florida three years ago.
Although her ancestry was important to her, Ogbu-McNair never used that to place herself above others, her husband said.
'She never used it to compare herself to other people. Her gestures and the way she lived her life were more royal than anything else,' McNair said.
In addition to her parents and husband, Ogbu-McNair is survived by her daughter, Princess Pilar, and her sister, Christie Ogbu Sabir.
