Grace Okezie, Nigerian Local Hair Wig Pioneer, Bags Nelson Mandela Leadership Award

Driven by a deep-hearted passion for her profession, 24-year old Grace Chizioma Okezie is on a mission, promoting local contents with excellence in Africa’s beauty care sector.

The patriotic hairstylist is credibly beautifying, inspiring and leading women of Africa to embrace world-class local hair care contents made with excellence in Africa as innovative socio-economic bricks to rebuild and restyle the social economy of the fatherland Africa, an economy which for many years has remained mostly influenced and dominated by colonial and other economic superpowers from outside Africa. 

Equipped with an over 10 years practical experience as a beautician and a testimonial bag that boasts of her well reputed professional certifications including the Diploma in Makeup Artistry and Headgear Arts obtained from the prestigious CVI Institute, the Lagos-based Ms Okezie pioneers an uncommon expertise in transforming local hair into world-class wearable wigs in Nigeria, sells them within Nigeria and exports them to make them satisfy wig lovers across Africa and even beyond while boosting the inward flow of foreign exchange to the motherland. 

The native of Umuahia local government area (LGA) of Abia State in South-East Nigeria runs her mission from Graceeycurls Enterprise, her Lagos-based one-stop shop for all things beauty, fully incorporated and now with a staff strength of eight experienced and constantly retrained specialists in hair and makeup artistry as well as manicure and pedicure routines.

With this team, she is consciously and cautiously cultivating her firm’s reputation for excellent service delivery, a classy discerning clientele, and a steadily teeming patronage. 

In her quest to reposition the local hair wigs as  widely acceptable and sustainable counterparts to the foreign artificial hair brands dominating the African marketplace now, Ms Okezie is openly observed and reputed for her goal-driven hard work and her premium value placed on the integrity of her services as well as her firm’s cosmetic products, exotic perfumes, prestigious designer clothings and classy female accessories.

It is in view and record of these feats that the highly revered West African Youth Council recently invested on Okezie the much coveted NELSON MANDELA LEADERSHIP AWARD OF EXCELLENCE AND INTEGRITY, enlisting her to join the league of other leading young people in Africa who have distinguished themselves as exemplary in their respective professions. 

From the top echelon of the Council, Okezie received a prestigious framed certificate of recognition signed on October 12th 2021 by the Chairperson of the West African Youth Council, H.E. (Ambassador) Emmanuel S. William who said that “the award is to celebrate Grace Chizioma Okezie and to encourage young people within her spheres of influence to standardize our transformation of our abundant  resources in Africa as finished consumer products or as input materials for further production in the global market, selling our stuff from our homeland to the world”. 

Also received along with the Certificate are a diplomatic ID card and a specialized automobile plate number to ease her cross-country movements across the ECOWAS region.

Running her vocational race steadily, the petite and pretty professional hairstylist is steadily building her vision to see women embrace more of local contents in their hair care and hairstyling. 

As a quintessential lady with an unquenchable drive to succeed in her ventures, the visionary go-getter has also recently veered into the real estate sector where she is already making a visible impact. 

In her words, “Being graceful is being polite and pleasant to people with all that you have. I am Grace by name and by my core personal value. Politeness and pleasantness are what I am being driven to give to my world through what we naturally have in abundance. Our human hair never stops growing, yet some of us are not so fortunate with enough quality hair. So, I am only using my grace to make those of us with plenty of quality natural hair to share that with those who do not have enough of it for one reason or the other. And I believe that should be done with utmost politeness to our customers in order to ultimately give them a special experience of the pleasantness in using our products and patronizing our services”. 

Ms Okezie has many more exciting sides to her vibrant character which she hopes to explore and exploit as time goes on, including her love for cooking continental dishes, and singing as well as dancing to good and classic highlife music.