By Godknows Igali
Rt. Hon. Chief Emeka Anyaoku, one of Nigeria’s best and most celebrated ever, entered the hallowed chamber of the eldest living patriarchs as he marked his 90th birthday anniversary on 18th January, 2023. Homebred from Nigeria’s premier University of Ibadan, which by all standards, stands out as a leading centre of learning and incubation of knowledge, Anyaoku is today, one of greatest human minds from the African continent, acclaimed global diplomat, administrator and traditional authority.
*AnyaokuAs expected, for such a personality who has attained the apogee of human accomplishment, the world’s greatest and strongest greeted his ripe age with the kindest of words. Worthy of note was the congratulations from Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, who for one has a good record of regularly appreciating Nigerians who have made imprints on such occasions. In this case, he poured encomiums on Chief Anyaoku, whom the country has honoured in various ways.
WHO ARE THESE CLASSISTS ?
From the early days when the University of Ibadan, then a College of the
University of London, opened its doors to young Nigerians, Anyaoku was among
the primal minds who found themselves in the halls of the premier institution
to seek knowledge. He enrolled to pursue a degree in ancient studies,
also known as Classics, though nowadays appears little known, is actually an
inter-disciplinary work that covers the history of Western European knowledge
and civilisation.
This programme in the Faculty of Arts was considered as an elite degree in the days of colonial rule, when such branch of scholarship offered graduates telescopic knowledge needed for great work of public administration. The study of classics at Ibadan was, therefore, a foundation for most of those who came to start the Nigerian bureaucracy and such elite services as the diplomatic corps.
The
idea was to imbue the students, most of whom were clearly exceptional, with
great analytical and critical thinking skills by creating a clear synergy
between ancient and modern culture and civilisation. Even more
robust was the fact, and perhaps till date, that it also focuses on the
communication abilities of its graduands. Anyaoku and his
colleagues left Ibadan, fluent not only in the highest diction of English, but
in Latin and adept in philosophy, literature, and ancient history.
The Faculty of Arts of Ibadan, of which he was part, had some of the greatest names with a flair for English language and expression in French and Latin. It had some of the most brilliant persons ever produced in Nigeria, and in the struggle for intellectual ascendancy, it was easy for colleagues to recall that Anyaoku stood out.
The world over, several leaders
and great thinkers such as Carl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, W.E.
Dubois, American broadcaster, Ted Turner, and several of the British Prime
Ministers, including Boris Johnson, all followed the path of study of
Classics. In Nigeria, besides Anyaoku, some of the early students of
classics in Ibadan include Gamaliel Onosode, as well as Amb. J.T.F. Iyalla,
Amb. B.A. Clark, Amb. Edward Martins, Amb. T. Omatsone, all of whom made their
marks in the diplomatic field as well as writers Christopher Okigbo, Isidore
Okpewho, and administrators J. A Kadiri, P. O. Ogundele.
Not the least, in
contemporary times, present Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki.
Although the Classics School in
Ibadan had produced many persons in national service, Chief Anyaoku stood out
as its best ambassador ever. With such a robust background, it is no surprise
that from when he graduated in 1958, he rose to become the very best in the
world of diplomacy and international statesmanship. In particular,
he was the first black man ever to fully head a major international
organisation when he got elected as the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.
The ICHIE ADAZIE STORY.
Having literally conquered the world like the case of the great Napoleon Bonaparte, Anyaoku returned to his own base in Obosi in present-day Anambra State of Nigeria to hold the exalted title of Ichie Adazie. No doubt, among several African groups, chieftaincy titles have always been recognised as parts of the highest levels of traditional recognition of any given person.
Particularly within
his Igbo ethnic group, such titles as Ichie Adazie are reserved for privileged
elders of most significant reckoning and human
accomplishment. This position is not only of great prestige
but great influence, and in the greater Igbo worldview places him as the
highest index of what is referred to as Nze within the “Ozo” Cultural
Society. Ozo Society membership implies that the holder of that
title is to some extent regarded as a living spirit and a moral conscience of
society.
THE NATAL YEARS
Chukwuemeka Eleazar Anyaoku was born on 18th January, 1933. His hometown Obosi is at the heartland and epicentre of many aspects of Ibo cultural renaissance and identity. The people of Obosi historically and culturally are very close to the Nri and Igbo Ukwu cultural epicentre of Igbo history, religion, and traditions. Unarguably, these are central places of African civilisation, well-known in the world of historiography and archaeology of prized finesse dating back to the 9th century.
His family background,
expectedly, coloured his growth and progression in life. His own
father, who was known as Emmanuel Chukwuemeka Anyaoku, was sufficiently
educated and attended the CMS School in the metropolis of Onitsha, where he was
raised by Rev William Blankett, one of the most famous missionaries of the
Church Missionary Society, then in the area. Later in life, the
senior Anyaoku became a Catechist. Catechists are Christian religious teachers
whose duties are to help teach members of the church on issue of doctrine and
how to nurture the spiritual life of persons at places where full-time priests
are not available.
His own mother, Cecilia, was also from one of the elite families in Obosi from a quarter known as Ugbogu. From his maternal side also was the Rev. Ekpunobi, the first person from that part of Nigeria to become a priest and played the key role in raising his mother. It was against this background that Anyaoku grew up with very strong Christian ethos of faith and piety from both sides of the family.
“OMNES UNUM SUMUS”
Young Anyaoku was sent to attend primary school at the regional town of Umuahia, which is today, capital of Abia state, and was a major railway and agricultural market centre at the time. Umuahia was mostly an agriculture-based town, strong in trading in such agricultural produce as palm oil and palm kernel, yam and cassava, and related light agro industries. As was the expectation, on completion of his junior elementary, he was moved to CMS Central School in Agbor, which today is in Delta State, where he came out in flying colours.
From there, he moved to Merchants of Light Secondary School in the town of Oba on the outskirts of Onitsha, which was closer home. Founded in 1946, with Anyaoku among its early students, this school, which was one of the first established educational institutions of its kind solely for boys, has always been known for its high disciplinary standards. The founder of the school, Dr. Ihediora Oli himself had worked for the colonial educational system in some of the best schools in the old Eastern Region before deciding to build a world-class centre of excellence. He gave it the motto “Omnes unum sumus” which translates as “We are all one”.
This was intended as a means of inculcating the
spirit of abiding friendship, teamwork, and mutual forbearance among the young
minds, strong virtues, which in no small ways impacted Anyaoku’s life.
Anyaoku was a member of the
second set in the school admitted in 1949 and stood out throughout his school
years, especially in debating, English Literature, and
Mathematics. When they sat for the Cambridge School Certificate, he
made the spectacular result of Grade 1, scoring A in ten subjects. Much later,
the school attracted several great Nigerians and West Africans such as Prof.
Bernard Oramah, current President of Afrexim Bank, Prof. Peter Onwualu, former
DG, Nigeria Medical Research Council of Nigeria, and Onoche Anyaoke, former
Group Executive Director, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC). In terms of its faculty, such great names as Prof. Chinua
Achebe, Prof. J. O. C. Nzeilo, former Vice Chancellor of the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, all populated its classrooms.
Interestingly enough, on
completion of his secondary education, Chief Anyaoku went on to teach such
difficult subjects as Mathematics, Latin, and English, for which he had always
stood out. This formed the background to his going to Ibadan to
continue with his classics study.
EARLY MASTERY OF BILATERAL AND
MULTILATERAL DIPLOMACY
Not too many meander with ease
between the walls separating bilateral and the much complex multi-state
diplomatic settings. Interestingly, Anyaoku did so, from the foundation days
with great panache and success.
On completion of his
undergraduate studies, as one of the outstanding students, Anyaoku had many
choices. First, he was to join several of his colleagues from Ibadan
who were picked to form the core of the new Nigerian Diplomatic Corps, which
was established in 1957 as part of the Prime Minister’s Office. Another option
was to join the colonial civil service, which was preserved for the very best
from all the colonies. With little choice at his disposal, he was
headhunted into the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC). The
CDC, which was founded by the colonial government in 1948, was to accelerate economic
and social development of the colonies and as a joint financial institution
through investing in equity and other forms of funds.
In the course of work, however,
the young Anyaoku became closely acquainted with Nigeria’s first and only Prime
Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912-1966). It was an enduring
happenstance in 1962, that at the time when he was on the entourage of his
principal, then Chairman of CDC, Lord Howick of Glendale, that the Prime
Minister who was a trained teacher turned politician, impressed on the young,
witty Anyaoku to join the Foreign Service of Nigeria which was directly under
his purview. He was subsequently recruited into the Diplomatic Corps
and placed at par with his erstwhile Ibadan classmates with whom he had been
relating in the course of work at the CDC. So, in terms of career,
he lost nothing. Hence, in the annals of Nigerian Diplomatic
history, Chief Anyaoku is rightly counted as one of the pioneers.
In diplomatic service, perhaps
as it is in other high public sector offices, the very best in the system are
often posted to the office of the Permanent Secretary or equivalent which have
the duty of running the administrative machinery and also vested with policy
direction.
Therefore, on recruitment,
Anyaoku was immediately picked as the Special Assistant to then Permanent
Secretary. By coincidence, at the time, negotiations between the
hitherto contending “Casablanca” and the “Monrovia” groups were heightened towards
the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The
egghead that Anyaoku was, became directly involved with this matter, thereby
shuttling between Addis Ababa and Nigeria until the organisation was founded in
May 1963, a laudable testimonial to his national and continental
service. The OAU has since transmuted into the African Union
in 1999.
As a high flyer, his services
were again needed at the Permanent Mission of Nigeria led by Chief Simeon Adebo
(1913-1994). The famous Nigerian lawyer who was Nigeria’s
Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1962-67) before becoming Under
Secretary-General of the United Nations had asked for one of the best from the
service to be sent to New York. The search for a round peg
again landed on the much sought-after young officer, Anyaoku.
At a time when the Nigerian
representation in such bodies was very lean, his position as the Alternate
Permanent Representative to serve on the very powerful Anti-Apartheid Committee
was very exposing. He was particularly involved in setting up a
Trust Fund to assist the defence of political detainees in the obnoxious
apartheid system at the time. Anyaoku was also very outspoken
against the white minority government of then Prime Minister, Ian Smith of
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
While in New York and with involvement in some bilateral activities, Anyaoku became conversant with the work of the newly established Commonwealth Secretariat which was different from the CDC from where he had crossed over into the national diplomatic service. This new body, the Commonwealth Secretariat, was a political institution that was formed to strengthen the bonds and facilitate cooperation between member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Actually, the Commonwealth of Nations was formed in 1926,
but its leadership remained amorphous, and the institutional structure was
rather fluid. This continued until 1965 when the Secretariat was
established as a primary organ of this body, with the headquarters in
Marlborough House, London. The mandate of the Secretariat was robust
and expected to operate as a multilateral political body as different from the
CDC, which was a British government developmental institution targeted at
bilateral intervention in former colonies of the United Kingdom.
With the setting up of the
Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965, the newly-appointed pioneer
Secretary-General, Sir Harold Smith of Canada during a visit in November to
Nigeria had indicated interest to assemble a team of crack young minds from
around the former British empire to help him set up the
Secretariat. He was also quoted to have insisted on doing that “to
make nonsense of the racist” tendencies that still existed at the global scene.
With such expressed desire, on the Prime Minister’s instruction, the then
Nigeria Foreign Minister, Chief Jaja Wachuku, sent in names of some “young”
officers, among which was the cerebral Anyaoku then in faraway New
York.
Many things in nature had always worked in favour of Chief Anyaoku. So, he took advantage of the opening of a position of Assistant Director to move into the Commonwealth Secretariat as one of its pioneer staff. The rest of it was his steady rise within the establishment of the organisation to become Deputy Secretary-General in 1977.
By 24th October, 1989, during the Commonwealth Heads of Mission Summit at Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia,. he was elected as the 3rd Secretary-General of the
organisation, the first from the African continent, and was re-elected for a
second five-year term from 1995 at the 1993 Commonwealth Heads of Government
Meeting in Limassol, Cyprus. In this capacity, he was the main
contact between the organisation and the Heads of State of at least 54
countries at the time. It would take another 20 years before another
person of colour, current Secretary-General, Baroness Patricia Scotland, would
be elected to the position.
COMMONWEALTH IMPRINT
Anyaoku’s career at the Commonwealth Secretariat was multifaceted and dealt with all manners of issues. From internal policies to such issues as fight against apartheid, intra-commonwealth cooperation, and the provision of capacity for the realisation of the mandate of the organization. Of particular note is the fact that he played a major role in the fight towards the dismantling of apartheid and, indeed, the independence of South Africa in 1994.
With hindsight, his almost monthly visits to South Africa on
the mandate of the Commonwealth and the accompanying negotiations with the then
apartheid government sounded the death knell for that system of
governance. Besides that, he was also involved as a Commonwealth
Observer in democracy and peace-building in several countries and particularly
in unravelling the imbroglio of military rule in Africa and on the Asian
continent Not the least were his efforts to restore democracy in
Nigeria and end military rule and the heady days of the fight for the
institution of human rights.
Anyaoku played a major role in the committal of the death sentence on former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo after an earlier kangaroo court trial by the government of General Abacha. Still in Nigeria, he also played a major role along with other international statesmen such as Kofi Annan to work for peaceful electoral transitions, leading to the emergence of the current Fourth Republic.
In the past, not forgetting the home front, for a brief
period, he returned to accept an offer by President Shehu Shagari as Nigeria’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs in his short-lived second term of the Second
Republic. After the military coup of 31st December 1983, he returned
to the Commonwealth Secretariat to continue his career; underscoring the fact
that he was available for national service whenever needed.
However, on retirement from the Commonwealth, he also yielded to
the call to serve as Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on
International Relations, which functioned until 2015.
THE WORTH OF GREAT LIVES
Chief Anyaoku has so far lived out the words of Benjamin Franklin that “great lives never go out, they go on” and he seems poised to still go for many more years. The Nigerian nation had severally conferred on him the high national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) and Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR). On the world scene, Anyaoku was awarded many high accolades around the world, most prominent being by the British Crown and Trustees of the prestigious honours established by the Empress, Queen Victoria in 1896, with the highest degree of knighthood – Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO).
For home country, such lives, which
show up intermittently, are perpetual reminders to succeeding generations as he
has shown, that arriving at the pinnacle is not achieved by micro wave leap but
“exerting marathon of purpose, passion and patience”. Even at 90,
Ichie Adazie continues to beam as an emblem of inspiration of service to
humanity. In several ways, he is a national treasure who must be
celebrated by all to continue to be the light of hope of a nation that can
reinvent itself and be the beam to all of Africa, the black man and indeed
humanity.
Congratulations to the grand old
man, the Rt. Hon. Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Ugwumba Idemili, Ichie Adazie Obosi.
Chief Anyaoku lives in Ikoyi,
Lagos, with his wife, Omooba Bunmi Anyaoku.
*Igali,
an award-winning writer, is a retired Ambassador and Fellow, Historical Society
of Nigeria
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