Emeka Anyaoku
Emeka Anyaoku, GCON, GCVO, CFR is a Nigerian diplomat. He was the third Commonwealth Secretary-General. Born in Obosi, Anyaoku was educated at Merchants of Light School, Oba, and attended the University College, Ibadan, then a college of the University of London, from which he obtained an honours degree in Classics as a College Scholar. Aside from his international career, Chief Anyaoku continues to fulfil the duties of his office as Ichie Adazie of Obosi, a traditional Ndichie chieftainship.
Family background
Eleazar Chukwuemeka "Emeka" Anyaoku was born on 18 January 1933 to Emmanuel and Cecilia Anyaoku in Obosi, then a very large village in the eastern part of Nigeria. Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Anyaoku had been educated to middle-school level after his primary education at the CMS school in Onitsha under the guardianship of Reverend William Blackett, a Christian Missionary. After his education, he worked first with the railways and later in the hospital in Kaduna in the Northern part of Nigeria before becoming a catechist. After serving for a number of years, he went back to his village to farm. He became Ononukpo of Okpuno Ire, a quarter in Ire, the largest village in Obosi.Cecilia, née Adiba Ogbogu, was married as second wife by Emmanuel when he returned from Kaduna following the death of his first wife. Cecilia hailed from a family in Ugamuma quarter of Obosi. She grew up at the home of Rev. Ekpunobi, her guardian, who was the first Obosi citizen to be ordained as an Anglican Priest. He was regarded as one of the most enlightened and educated in the community then. Cecilia stayed with the Ekpunobi family as a ward. Rev. Ekpunobi, on learning of the death of Emmanuel's wife, invited him to his home and subsequently convinced Emmanuel and Adiba to marry each other. Their first child, a girl, did not survive. Thereafter, Emeka was born and he has five siblings.
Education
Emeka Anyaoku at the age of seven was sent to live with his father's only brother, Egwuenu Anyaoku, at Umuahia to start schooling in a very rural school. The highest class then at the school was standard four. The colonial dispensation then generally did not encourage pupils to go beyond standard four or standard six. At the age of 10, in 1943, Emeka was sent to stay with his father's cousin, Nathaniel Enwezor who was Headmaster at CMS Central School at Agbor, 75 km from Obosi.For his secondary education, the young Anyaoku attended Merchants of Light School at Oba. It was a boarding school founded by a friend of his father's, Dr. Enoch Oli, a Nigerian educationist trained in London and Oxford. Mr. Oli taught Emeka and the other students the importance of hard work, good character and good inter-personal relations.
During this period of his formative years, Anyaoku had begun to stand out as a smart, brilliant young man. At Obosi village during holidays, especially Easter and Christmas times, when the students came home, one of his contemporaries, Chief Godfrey Eneli, recalled that they used to have debates and different kinds of students’ activities organized by the Obosi Students Association. Anyaoku, Eneli said, showed particular signs of leadership qualities. In his words: "I had the idea that he would become a leader, which he exhibited every time we all went home on holidays." He said further: "We used to call him 'lawyer', because he was always arguing, and logical in whatever he approached. We would be persuaded by his intellect and by his argument, and his approach to whatever discussions we had."
Another of his contemporaries, S. I. Metu, a classmate who later became a top banker and civil servant, extolled his interpersonal skills. He said of Anyaoku, "one of his popularities was that he was a very good mixer, he virtually had no enemies because of his general friendliness….. from all we now know of Mr. Anyaoku, it is obvious that he was destined to be a diplomat, because he had all the makings – intelligence, friendliness, the ability to get things without offending anybody." Metu also recalled Anyaoku as a very studious student at the Merchants of Light School. He stated, "Anyaoku cannot spare any moment for play – he was always reading or working on something. Or occasionally, when he was tired and wanted to relax, he would crack some very serious jokes and everybody would be laughing." Anyaoku was among the second intake of 60 boys. When they sat for the Cambridge School Certificate examination, he took 10 subjects and earned the school's first-grade pass, the highest level.
After his secondary education, Anyaoku in 1952 proceeded to teach at Emmanuel College, Owerri in the then Eastern Region, he was there until mid-1954 lecturing in mathematics, Latin and English. He was reputedly an assiduous young teacher, meticulous in preparing his lesson notes. He gave back to his students the best of what he had learned at MOLS while injecting humor into his teachings.
One of his teachers at MOLS had kindled in him an interest in the Classics. His Latin teacher had inspired in him a love for the languages, laws and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the classical roots of the English language. Anyaoku then decided to go and study Classics at the new University College of Ibadan, the premier higher institution of its kind in the country, which had been instituted in 1948 as an overseas college of the University of London.
During the mid-1950s when Anyaoku was an undergraduate at the University College, Ibadan, the Nigerian nation was embroiled in debates, discussions and demonstrations on the political future of the country. There were controversies on when Nigeria should gain independence from Britain and with what political structure it should seek independence whether as a unitary or federal state. The city of Ibadan was one of the main epicentres of these debates. And the University College, which had brought together brilliant students, lecturers and politicians from diverse parts of the country, became a centre of what was then described as national radicalism.
Anyaoku was in the thick of this as a student union leader. He along with like-minds in the union leadership campaigned in favour of unitary state, against federalism. They sent petitions and delegations to the three foremost political leaders in the country then, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in the Eastern region of the country, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Western, and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello in the Northern region.
Anyaoku in 1959 obtained a London University Honours Degree in classics as a college scholar and joined the Commonwealth Development Corporation in Lagos. The corporation sent him as an Executive Trainee to the CDC headquarters in London from where he went on a course at the Royal Institute for Public Administration in London. On 1 October 1960, Nigeria was granted independence by Britain. And Anyaoku was posted back to the CDC West Africa regional office in Lagos at the end of December 1960.
Marriage
In December 1961, Anyaoku then a CDC Executive Officer came in contact with a 20-year-old Yoruba lady, Princess Ebunola Olubunmi Solanke, at a bachelor's eve party which he and his flatmate hosted for a friend of theirs in Lagos. The princess, familiarly known by the diminutive "Bunmi", was educated in England at a Christian girls boarding school, St. Mary's School at Hastings. She thereafter attended Pitman College, London. Emeka and Bunmi were married at the Anglican Cathedral Church in Lagos on 10 November 1962.Career
In 1959, Emeka Anyaoku joined the Commonwealth Development Corporation. In early 1962, Anyaoku came in contact with the then Prime Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He had accompanied his visiting boss, Lord Howick, Chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, to a meeting with the Prime Minister on the activities of the corporation in Nigeria and the West African region. The Prime Minister, impressed by Anyaoku's answers to some of his questions on the projects supported by the CDC in West Africa, took an interest in Anyaoku's future and persuaded him to consider joining the Nigerian Foreign Service. After a gruelling interview by the Federal Civil Service Commission, he was offered an appointment in the Foreign Service in April 1962. Within a month of his entry, he was appointed Personal Assistant to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry for External Affairs. There he was closely involved in the process that led to the establishment of the Organisation for African Unity in May 1963. Following Nigeria's independence, he joined Nigeria's diplomatic service, and in 1963 was posted to its Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.In 1966, he joined the Commonwealth Secretariat as Assistant Director of International Affairs. In 1968–69 there was a campaign by the Nigerian military government for the recall of Anyaoku; which said he was not a suitable Nigerian nominee, and they were anxious about his loyalty "to the country of his birth". But "Emeka had resigned from the Nigerian Foreign Service and Arnold had no difficulty in turning aside the demand".
In 1977, the Commonwealth Heads of Government elected him as Deputy Secretary-General. In 1983, Nigeria's civilian government appointed Anyaoku to become Nigeria's Foreign Minister. After the overthrow of the government by the military later that year, he returned to his position as Deputy Secretary-General with the support of the new government in Nigeria and the endorsement of all Commonwealth governments.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Kuala Lumpur on 24 October 1989, Anyaoku was elected the third Commonwealth Secretary-General. He was re-elected at the 1993 CHOGM in Limassol for a second five-year term, beginning on 1 April 1995.
United Nations
In July 1963, at the age of 30, he was posted to Nigeria's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. His first child, Adiba, was born in the New York Lying-In Hospital on 20 November 1963, two days before President John F. Kennedy of the United States was assassinated. A few weeks previously, Nigeria had become a Republic, with Nnamdi Azikiwe as the first President. At his duty post at the United Nations, Anyaoku as Nigeria's alternative representative in the United Nations special committee on Apartheid drafted the resolution – presented to the General Assembly by Nigeria in 1965 – that established a trust fund to enable governments to contribute to the defense of political detainees in South Africa.He became embroiled in the crisis triggered by the Ian Smith administration in the then Southern Rhodesia in Southern Africa, who announced Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain. Anyaoku spoke at various forums to condemn this development. It was during one of these occasions that the news of Nigeria's first military coup d'état of 15 January 1966 reached him. The Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the powerful Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and a number of other leaders of the post-independence state were assassinated during the coup d'état. The coup d'état had taken place just one day after the Prime Minister hosted other Commonwealth leaders including the new Secretary-General, Arnold Smith, to a meeting in Lagos where they discussed the issue of Rhodesia.