By Daddy Fair
Famous Hollywood actor, Mr. Forest Whitaker, has been bestowed with a chieftaincy title in Nigeria's Igboland.
Whitaker, who traces his ancestral roots to Nigeria and visits the country at least three times yearly, has been conferred with the traditional title, "Nwannedinamba" of Nkwerre, meaning there is a brother in a foreign land.
"I am proud of my Nigerian Igboland lineage," he said after the presentation, and continued, "I have Nigerian blood flowing in my veins.
"I am from Nkwerre community in Imo State, which is why I visit the country three times every year. Nigeria is my home and Africa my root," he ended.
It would be recalled that after 22 years of marriage, the actor and Keisha Nash Whitaker quit their matrimonial commitment. Whitaker, 57, filed for divorce from his longtime wife, citing irreconcilable differences.
The Oscar winner has not commented publicly on the split, but the news came as a shock to many fans. The couple, who share adult daughters, Sonnet Noel, 22, and True, 20, first met on the set of 1993 film Blown Away in which Nash Whitaker, also a model, played the actor’s girlfriend onscreen. She once told PEOPLE magazine that at the time he “swept her off her feet.”
Whitaker proposed just one year later and they were married in 1996 in Montego Bay, Jamaica. They welcomed their daughter Sonnet in 1996 and True in 1998. Their other two children, Ocean, 21, and Autumn, 20, are from their previous relationships. “I had seen him in ‘A Rage in Harlem,’ Keisha once told Ebony magazine of the Black Panther star. “Right away, I thought Forest had a gentle soul and a nice spirit.”
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