Buchi Emecheta, Nigerian female novelist, based in Britain since the 1960s has died at 72.

 Emecheta, born July 21, 1944 wrote more than 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). 

 Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. 

 Emecheta once described her stories as "stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." 

 She has been described  as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

 She died Wednesday, January 25, 2017 in London. 

 The President of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, Denja Abdullahi who confirmed her death described it as a big loss to the Nigerian literary world.