Emeka Anyaoku

Chief Emeka Anyaoku, GCON GCVO, CFR, CON (born 18 January 1933) is a Nigerian diplomat of Igbo descent.

He was the third Commonwealth Secretary-General.

Born in Obosi, Anyaoku was educated at Merchants of Light School, Oba, and attended the University College of 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 fulfill the duties of his office as Ichie Adazie of Obosi, a traditional Ndichie chieftainship.

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 the 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 (Head) 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 after 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.

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 (MOLS) 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.