46 Facts About Emeka Anyaoku

Chief Emeka Anyaoku, GCON, GCVO, CFR was born on 18 January 1933 and is a Nigerian diplomat of Igbo descent.

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.

Emeka Anyaoku became Ononukpo of Okpuno Ire, a quarter in Ire, the largest village in Obosi.

Emeka Anyaoku grew up at the home of Rev Ekpunobi, her guardian, who was the first Obosi citizen to be ordained as an Anglican Priest.

Emeka Anyaoku was regarded as one of the most enlightened and educated in the community then.

Emeka Anyaoku was reputedly an assiduous young teacher, meticulous in preparing his lesson notes.

Emeka Anyaoku gave back to his students the best of what he had learned at MOLS while injecting humor into his teachings.

Emeka 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.

Emeka Anyaoku was in the thick of this as a student union leader.

In early 1962, Emeka Anyaoku came in contact with the then Prime Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Belewa.

Emeka Anyaoku 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.

In 1983, Nigeria's civilian government appointed Emeka Anyaoku to become Nigeria's Foreign Minister.

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Kuala Lumpur on 24 October 1989, Emeka Anyaoku was elected the third Commonwealth Secretary-General.

Emeka Anyaoku was re-elected at the 1993 CHOGM in Limassol for a second five-year term, beginning on 1 April 1995.

Emeka Anyaoku's 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.

Emeka Anyaoku got 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.

Emeka Anyaoku was among the three names suggested and was selected by the Prime Minister for secondment to the new Commonwealth secretariat.

Emeka Anyaoku was made Assistant Director of International Affairs which later became the Political Affairs Division.

Emeka Anyaoku left on a Red Cross flight to Nigeria via Amsterdam and Sao Tome.

Emeka Anyaoku eventually had a dramatic encounter with Ojukwu in his bunker at his headquarters.

Emeka Anyaoku continued to be involved in various Commonwealth initiatives and negotiations, such as the Gibraltar referendum of 1967, the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla constitutional crisis of 1969 to 1970, the problems following Commonwealth Games' boycotts during the 1980s and the process leading to peace and democracy in Zimbabwe, Namibia and in particular, South Africa.

Emeka Anyaoku moved up the ladder within the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Emeka Anyaoku became the Director of the International Affairs Division in 1971 and in 1975 rose to the position of Assistant Secretary-General.

Emeka Anyaoku was re-elected at the 1993 Limassol Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting for a second five-year term.

Emeka Anyaoku tirelessly championed and spoke in favour of the struggle to rid South Africa of Apartheid.

In 1990, on the release of former President Nelson Mandela from Pollsmoor Prison, Emeka Anyaoku hosted Madiba to his first official dinner as Commonwealth Secretary-General in London.

Emeka Anyaoku was involved in numerous interventions to broker peace between several Commonwealth leaders and opposition parties in their countries.

Emeka Anyaoku initiated the use of Commonwealth observer groups to assist elections in various countries.

Emeka Anyaoku persuaded the two leaders to agree to his proposal to send an experienced representative to come to Bangladeshi to hold discussions with the Prime Minister, Begum Zia and the leader of the opposition Sheik Hasina with a view to finding a formula for mutual accommodation between their two parties.

Emeka Anyaoku consequently sent as his special representative, Sir Ninian Steven, a former Australian Governor-General, who spent weeks in Dhaka brokering peace between the government and the opposition parties.

Emeka Anyaoku intervened in Pakistan during a potentially destabilizing disagreement between the then President, Mr Farooq Leghari and the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.

Emeka Anyaoku had a much tougher case when Babangida 'stepped aside' and General Sani Abacha after a few months of the contraption called Interim Government took over the administration of the country in a military coup d'etat on 17 November 1993.

Emeka Anyaoku arrested and jailed the presumed winner of the 12 June 1993 election, Abiola.

Emeka Anyaoku continued to campaign for a peaceful resolution of the crisis by sending messages to Abacha and making public statements, to no avail.

Emeka Anyaoku made a passionate appeal to Abacha soliciting for clemency for the condemned activists.

Emeka Anyaoku had with Abacha's agreement met in July 1995 with Abiola in detention to discuss his proposal for a dialogue between the two parties with the aim of agreeing arrangements for the acceptance of the outcome of the annulled presidential elections.

Emeka Anyaoku retired from his position as Commonwealth Secretary-General on 31 March 2000.

Emeka Anyaoku was invited to be a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics.

Emeka Anyaoku was one of the fifty, and one of the one hundred individuals who were awarded special gold medals for outstanding contribution to the country's development by the Federal Government in the celebrations of Nigeria's independence Golden Jubilee in 2010 and Centenary in 2014.

Emeka Anyaoku is a published author and now holds 33 honorary Doctorate degrees from top universities in Britain, Canada, Ghana, Republic of Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland and Zimbabwe.

Chief Emeka Anyaoku served under three democratically elected Presidents in Nigeria as Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations from 2000 to 2015.

The Ichie Emeka Anyaoku has been married to Princess Bunmi Emeka Anyaoku since 1962.

Emeka Anyaoku has two grandchildren, born to Adiba and her husband; Irenne Ighodaro and Osita Ighodaro.

Emeka Anyaoku is an Anglican, his father having converted to that faith.

Emeka Anyaoku is a vice-president of the Royal Commonwealth Society.