CHIEF Emeka Anyaoku is 90. What can you say about him?
I remember him saying that for a black man to attain the kind of achievement he has attained, he would have to be much better than a white colleague. That struck me very succinctly because there was this man who was getting to the point of becoming the Secretary General of the Commonwealth and I believe people in the Secretariat would have been looking at him as a possible candidate in the future but they would still be looking at him as a black man. I remember Shonekan telling us that when he was a young man, he had an English friend who invited him to visit his family, when he got there, the mother of this English friend of his asked for his name and he said Chukwuemeka Anyaoku and the English woman shook her head and said, ‘Can you repeat yourself?’ and he repeated the name Chukwuemeka Anyaoku. And the English woman said do you mind if I call you, ‘Tall’ and Chukwuemeka Anyaoku rebuffed such while repeating his name. That is the kind of environment you have to operate in where even you as a black man won’t think of yourself as a black man until you are told that you are a black man because you look at yourself as a perfect human being. I went through this kind of discrimination as a student in Canada, United States, Germany, so I know what he would have gone through even serving as a senior officer in the Commonwealth Secretariat. When the candidacy of Chief Emeka Anyaoku for the Secretary General came up, I was then in the ministry of Foreign Affairs and Special Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, General Ike Nwachukwu, the candidacy of Chief Emeka Anyaoku was heavily supported by the then foreign minister, General Nwachukwu acting under the directive of the then military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. So, there was this massive official support for Chief Emeka Anyaoku’s candidacy. Whether we supported him or not, if he was a bad candidate, he would still not have won. You have to have a good candidate to win an election; an election that cuts across the whole of the Caribbean, white Commonwealth and black Africa. I must also let you know that at this particular time, we had a colleague of mine, Debo Adefuye, who was our High Commissioner in Jamaica who was very critical to mobilising black votes of the Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean. Almost all of them voted for Chief Emeka Anyaoku. We also had supporters in West Africa and the rest of Africa but the interesting thing is not all the people, countries in Africa actually voted for Chief Emeka Anyaoku.
The support he had in the Caribbean and in the rest of Africa led to his emergence as Commonwealth Secretary General. To everybody’s happiness, when he became Secretary General, he discharged the duties of that office with excellence. It was under his leadership that the Commonwealth got heavily involved in the decolonization and the destruction of apartheid in South Africa. Emeka Anyaoku is an excellent man in many ways; he is a polished man; he is a fine diplomat; he is everything you will want to have as a black man leading an international organization. He led it better than even white people. Of course, there are people who will feel that the Commonwealth Organisation is a hangover from British colonialism. Such people will say may be, the Commonwealth should not exist, that is not my view. Any organisation that brings all the races of the world together is something to support. In the Commonwealth, you have black Africans, black Caribbean, you have white Caribbean, white Australian, Chinese, Malays. It brings together all the races across continents of the world. Any organization like that is worth supporting. Chief Emeka Anyaoku discharged his responsibilities to that organization with remarkable excellence. Chief Emeka Anyaoku, as Secretary General of the Commonwealth, was recalled during the second coming of Shehu Shagari. He was brought back from the Commonwealth to be Foreign Affairs Minister in Nigeria. He was sworn in as Foreign Minister and held the position for three months. He had not even earned any salary before the government was overthrown. He had to go back to his job at the Commonwealth secretariat. If he was not a fine man, if he was not an excellent man, the secretariat would have found it extremely difficult to bring him back. He had a break when he came back to serve his country and after the Buhari coup of 1983, of course, all of them were dismissed. Thank God he was not one of those locked up. He went back to the secretariat and continued his job and moved on to become the Commonwealth Secretary General. His performance led to the peaceful decolonization of Namibia and South Africa. He was working with other members of the Commonwealth; he was very effective in enunciating the democratic principles in the Commonwealth, that is, every Commonwealth government must be justified on the basis of being a democracy. This was why when Sani Abacha took over, Nigeria had to be suspended because the principles of Chief Emeka Anyaoku and members of the Commonwealth established that if you had democratic deficit, you could not continue to be a member of the Commonwealth. And he did some of the things he did for Nigeria almost at the risk of his life. I know that during the Abacha regime, his life was not safe because some felt that he was responsible for getting Nigeria suspended.
What are those ideals that Nigeria should learn from this global citizen?
I will tell people to take from the life of Emeka Anyaoku his advocacy for democracy. I hate to use the word, detribalize but since we are looking at a Nigerian environment, I will say Chief Emeka Anyaoku respects every person irrespective of his age, gender, colour, ethnic background. He has no tribal feelings and it is not surprising because his wife is a Yoruba lady. You may not know that Chief Emeka Anyaoku and wife have a house in Obosi and in Abeokuta, though he is comfortable anywhere in Nigeria. There is nowhere he can go in Nigeria and feel he is an alien or foreigner. It is a pity that a man like Chief Emeka Anyaoku did not have any interest in national politics. He would have been an ideal man to bring the country together because he has unifying qualities that would have bound this country together. He is unique because he has this quality of treating everybody as a human being not thinking of tribe, ethnic group or race. If you have something to offer, Chief Emeka Anyaoku will celebrate you. I wish all our leaders could learn from him, could learn from his life that it is not how much money you have but what you bring into life that matters.
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