ANYAOKU, Chief Emeka Eleazar

1. Ichie Adazie Obosi
2. Ugwumba Idemili.

1. Commanderofthe Order ofthe Federal Republic (CFR), 2003;
2. Centenary Award
3. ;Lifetime Achievement Award, Thisday Awards, 2006
4. First Class Nigeria Most Prominent International Stateman Award, by Hallmark of Labour Foundation, 2001

1.. KnightCommanderofthe Most CourteousOrderofLesetho, 1999;
2. The Namibian Order of Weiwitschia;
3. ; Four Highest Trinity Cross ofTrinidad and Tobago

tennis, swimming,reading

Obosi Students Association
Royal Commonwealth Society.

A Quintessential Diplomat (Ebenezer Obadare). The average observer of the international scene lives in mortal dread ofthe diplomat. Thediplomatisregarded, attimeswithjus tice, as the repository of all that is venal about man. The quintessential diplomat is thought to be no better than a glorified crook, a soulless ven dorof lieswhospeakswith bothsidesof hismouth. Admittedly, diplomatic icons down the ages, (Metternich, Castlereagh, Nicolson, Gromyko, Kissinger) have done little to correct this impres sion. Metternich once famously interpreted the re port ofa counterpart’s death asyet another political gambit, while Gromyko rightly earned international notoriety fordissembling andinscrutability. As such, the Biblical injunction never to lie is generally thought not to apply to the diplomat whose overall briefing case is to lie for his country. If that is the case,the successful diplomat ought to be that person who is well-versed in the science of double speak. If the mastery ofdoublespeakwereto bethe sole index of diplomatic accomplishment, Chief Emeka Anyaoku the outgoing secretary-general of the Commonwealth would be deemed a professional failure. Yet, around the world today, he is widely celebratedas a quintessentialdiplomat,the audacious figure who has succeeded in making the Common wealth relevant to the imperatives ofa New World Order. The irony of it all is that Chief Anyaoku is not your run-of-the-mill diplomat, and has actually established an international reputation, not on ac count ofhis mastery oforal duplicity, but as one who has consistently called political spades by their ac tual names. In 1993, as the unexpected abrogation of the June 12 presidential election threw Nigeria into a tailspin, Emeka Anyaoku pointedly refused to lie for his country at the Commonwealth by trench antly condemning the irrational coup against the people ofNigeria. He remained firm in his opposition even as the diplomatically uncouth regime of late General Sani Abacha employed various tactics to oust him. As Nigeria wallowed in diplomatic isolation under the Abacha regime, the awkward ally of the international community’s Club of Rejects, Emeka Anyaoku remained the lone star in an otherwise gloomy international firmament. Yet, his was no serendipitous radicalism. Candour had been the young Anyaoku’s forte ever since his undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan as a classics student. It continued to be his watchword in 1965 when he made the eventful en tranceintoMarlborough Houseas a foundation staff of the Commonwealth. In retrospect, the decision to stay with theCommonwealth has been themost im portant decision of Anyaoku’s career. The truth is that when he decided to join the Commonwealth in 1965, the futureof the youngorganization was still largely misty. Tobesure, even the mostclairvoyant political analyst could not hazard a guess about the fateofanorganization whosesurvival seemedtorest on the nourishment of a master-slave relationship between the Queen and her subjects in the former British colonies around the world. The Common wealth has, however, survived all prophecies of pre mature mortality, becoming in the process one of the mostpotent institutional arrowheads of the glo bal campaign for the entrenchment of democratic ethos. Today, if the early fears about the survival of the Commonwealth have been replaced by a new certaintyconcerning its place in the making of the global democratic renaissance, it is largely because of the extensive work done over the years by people like ChiefEmeka Anyaoku. In her opening address at the 1999 Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in Durban, South Africa, the head of the Commonwealth,Queen Elizabeth of England rightly acknowledged the immense contributions of Chief Anyaokuthus:”You have been a warm,spirited and energeticleader, working tirelessly to build the Common wealth into an essential part of the international landscape, and intent to prove to the world that the Commonwealth is a truly international body … the Commonwealth will never forget you”. Nor will Anyaoku ever forget the Common wealth. It was in the Commonwealth that the childdiplomat grew to become a father. Today, it is the Commonwealth that has brought him the interna tional reputation which he could never have dreamt of when he left the university to train as a diplomat for the newly independent state ofNigeria. At that time,the bestthat hecouldhave hopedto bewasthe Foreign Affairs Minister of Nigeria,- no less an intimidating assignment. Emeka Anyaoku was to realize this ambition several years later when he accepted, against his better judgment, to be Foreign Affairs Minister under the regime of the maladroit, Alhaji Shehu Shagari. By the time the regime was removed in a military putsch in December 1983, it was clear to Anyaokuthat the Commonwealth was where his destiny lay. In 1989, in Kuala Lumpur, his election as thethird(andthe firstblackAfrican)secretary-gen eral oftheCommonwealth, wasthevirtualicingon the cake. Anyaoku’selection itselfwasaclassicex ample ofdiplomaticmobilization. His candidacy had been vigorously opposed by those countries who curiouslycalculatedthat the election ofablack Af ricanasthesecretary-general oftheCommonwealth would slow down the organizationin itsefforts to terminate apartheid rule in South Africa. Kenneth Kaunda,thethenPresident ofZambia whofavoured a”whitebridge toSouthAfrica”,actually believed that onlyawhitesecretary-general could providethe type ofleadershipthat he was convincedthe Com monwealth neededatthat pointintime.Incidentally, ChiefAnyaoku’s rival forthe seat, former Austral ian Prime Minister GoughWhitlam was not a political dwarf. He had been an ambassadorto UNESCO and amembe rof the Eminent Persons Group to South Africa,However, despite his opponent’s undeniable international clout, Chief Anyaokuwas able to carry the day due partly to his own reputation as a serene and cool-headed diplomat,and partly to the dexterity of the Babangidaregime, which by then was still largely free of the shenanigans that were to characterize its latter days. lt is, therefore,one of the most gripping ironies of the Commonwealth’s history that the same secretary-general who rode into office on theback ofwidespreadcynicismabouthis perform ance has had arguably the most successful tenure ever. ChiefEmeka Anyaoku’s tenure as secretarygeneral will be remembered for so many achieve ments. He was instrumental to the attainment of in dependence byNamibiain1990,thedismantling of apartheid inSouthAfrica,andtheunmaking ofun popular militaryjuntasin Sierra LeoneandNigeria. Mostrecently,he lent his voiceto the condemnation of thecoupthat ledtothe removal ofPrime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan. He was an international proselyte for democratic principles, andspokeboldly forthecause ofjusticeandfreedomintheworld.He is also largelyresponsible forthere-organization of theCommonwealth; arestructuring that has made theCommonwealth moreresponsive tothedomes tic problems ofitsmembersandthe flow ofinterna tionalcurrents. Specifically, mention mustbemade here oftheCommonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG),whichmeetsregularlytodeliberateoncri sis situations in member countries. Born in 1933 in Obosi, Onitsha, Anambra state,Nigeria,Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the Ichie Adazi of Obosi and the of Idemili is one of the makers of Nigerian diplomacy inthe20thcentury. His unqualified success as the secretary-general of the Common wealth arguably paved the way for the election of another black man, Ghana’s Kofi Annan, as secretary general of the United Nations. His career isaliving tributeto forthrightness, ambition,and the doggedness of the human spirit.