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This book of 12 chapters, an epilogue, appendices and an index covers such themes as Chief Emeka Anyaoku's early years, his career in The Commonwealth, Southern Africa, the Commonwealth as an agent of democracy, the Nigerian crisis, Commonwealth intervention for peace in member countries, the Racial Factor, Sustainable Development, Restructuring of The Commonwealth Secretariat, Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings and his call to service in Nigeria. This book written in racy style approaches the task at hand in a thematic fashion rather than strictly in a chronological order. This makes for easy reading.

The author briefly discusses his family background and his formative years. He was born on 18th of January 1933. His father had worked between 1922 and 1928 as a clerk in the railway department and later in the government hospital in Kaduna before moving to Nkwerre to settle down as a teacher and a catechist with the church missionary society. He finally returned home to Obosi in 1943 where he became a farmer. Because of early contact with western education, Chief Emeka's father, even as far back as 1933, ensured that his wife delivered baby Emeka in the CMS hospital in Ogidi. As was usual in those days, Emeka lived with his uncle and other relations until he gained admission into a boarding school. Because of a bout of malaria he missed the entrance examinations to established schools such as Government College Umuahia and Denis Memorial Grammar School Onitsha. His father, more or less, donated him as a guinea pig to a friend, Enoch I. Oli, who in 1947 established a school which he called Merchants of Light School (MLS). Emeka Anyaoku was one of the 60 pioneering set who virtually built the school from scratch. In spite of the hardship involved, he buried himself in his studies. He, unfortunately, lost his mother in 1949. Thanks to hardworking teachers, he distinguished himself in Latin, English and Mathematics when he left school in 1951. He taught briefly and in 1954 gained admission to the University College Ibadan where he became a college scholar in his second year. This was a remarkable feat for a young man who was not a product of the well established and endowed government colleges or the CMS, Catholic,

Methodist or Baptist Secondary Schools. From this time onwards, Emeka rose from glory to glory. While in the University of Ibadan, his neighbours and colleagues were Olajide Alo and Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the Vancouver Commonwealth gold medalist. The two of them, unfortunately, died prematurely Alo disappeared in Lagos while in diplomatic service and Ifeajuna was executed in Biafra after being accused and tried for treason.

Emeka Anyaoku, on graduation from Ibadan was recruited as executive assistant to the regional controller of Commonwealth Development Corporation, a position which he hotly contested with other bright graduates from the University of Ibadan. Whatever Emeka did, he did it with excellence. His recruitment into the CDC was influenced by his performance in a Latin play staged at the University of Ibadan while he was a student there. Of course, he did not know that the man who later recruited him was in the audience. It was as executive assistant in CDC that Emeka Anyaoku went with a delegation to see the Prime Minister of Nigeria, Rt. Hon. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, whose government was in 1962 seeking a loan of ś3 million. The Prime Minister, after his formal meeting with the delegation called back Emeka Anyaoku and virtually asked him what he was doing working brilliantly for a British Company while his young country could easily have used his excellent services. The Prime Minister then told him to come and work for Nigeria. Emeka Anyaoku, forthrightly, without equivocation told the Prime Minister that the only department he could work for was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Prime Minister then said he saw no problem in his desire and interest and then personally directed Alhaji Nuhu Bamali, Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to send Civil Service Commission forms to Emeka Anyaoku. These he promptly filled, asking to be recruited as first secretary even though his classmates in the ministry were still second secretaries. This led to protests from his colleagues in the ministry. But after what appeared to be a hostile panel of interviewers, he nevertheless was appointed and given the rank he applied for and for the next one year served as personal assistant to the permanent secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Francis Nwokedi. It was from this office that Chief Simeon Adebo, Ambassador and permanent representative of Nigeria at the U.N. personally requested for Emeka to be sent to him in New York. In a country dominated by ethnic identity, Emeka was found worthy not by his ethnic cohorts but a Hausa prime minister and a Yoruba ambassador, a classic case of only the deep speaking to the deep. Emeka did not and has never had to rely on an ethnic horse to ride to prominence. As if he was being moved by unseen hands of fate he also ended up being some kind of symbol of national unity by marrying Bunmi Solanke, daughter of Olusola Solanke, a second world war veteran of the Royal Air Force and a reputable lawyer.

Emeka Anyaoku's main remit while in the permanent mission of Nigeria in the UN was being the alternate delegate to the UN antiapartheid committee where he served with Diallo Telli of Guinea, who subsequently became the SecretaryGeneral of the Organisation of African Unity, but was unfortunately murdered by his own government after such a distinguished career because he was suspected of having ambition for higher office in his country. It was his experience in New York and the radical views of young men of his generation about racial discrimination that were to shape his future career.

The Commonwealth of Nation in 1965 decided to have a permanent secretariat in London instead of the ad hoc arrangement by which Commonwealth affairs were handled, largely by the British Ministry of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Canadian diplomat and civil servant, Arnold Smith, was appointed SecretaryGeneral and on resumption needed a representative staff reflecting the national diversity in the Commonwealth. He approached the Nigerian government for the secondment of an effficient and proven diplomat to join his staff. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent three names including Emeka Anyaoku to the Prime Minister Alhaji Abubakar who promptly penciled down Emeka Anyaoku for the job. While all this was going on; Emeka Anyaoku was blissfully unaware of it all. On being told of his secondment to the Commonwealth Office by Chief Simeon Adebo, he rejected the offer and when he was told that he, as a career officer, could not refuse a posting, he offered to resign. It was in a private conversation with his Permanent Secretary Francis Nwokedi that he was told that his secondment was really an honour done him by the Prime Minister. This book is therefore dedicated to the memory of the prime minister who was assassinated after having had the honour of hosting the Commonwealth, in an extraordinary summit on U.D.I. in Rhodesia in January 1966, the very first time a Commonwealth summit was held outside London.

From 1966 to 2000, that is, for 34 years except for a brief period of three months in 1983, when he was foreign minister under President Shehu Shagari, Chief Anyaoku worked his way up from the post of assistant director, to director, assistant secretary general, deputy secretarygeneral and was finally elected secretarygeneral in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in 1989. This book titled, The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth is an account of the 34 years of Chief Anyaoku's work in the Commonwealth Secretariat. The book is not an autobiography as such, since Phyllis Johnson had a listening ear and had already written what can be said to be an authoritative biography of Chief Anyaoku. It is a book of memoirs and it reminds one of Dean Acheson's arrogantly titled memoirs, Present at the Creation. Chief Anyaoku's career as an international civil servant epitomises the story of the modern Commonwealth of which he was a major player. In a foreword to this book, the Madiba, Nelson Mandela said, "I am aware of the need to avoid exaggerating the role of the individual in history. On the other hand, history is replete with examples of individuals intervening in situations and making all the difference. Emeka Anyaoku's intervention in South Africa's transition from apartheid rule to nonracial democracy was a decisive contribution which history, if properly nursed, will come to acknowledge" (pvl). Expressing the same sentiment Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 described Emeka Anyaoku as a "warm, spirited and energetic leader, working tirelessly to build the Commonwealth into an essential part of the international landscape". She added, "We will miss you, the Commonwealth will never forget you". She described Chief Anyaoku as "quintessentially African, generous, positive and open". Of course, I agree with the Queen that Chief Anyaoku is generous, positive and open. But I will not describe him as quintessentially African, if he was quintessentially African, he would have known what to do in 1983 to get his ministerial appointment confirmed on the first vote by the senate while members were loudly complaining that Chief Anyaoku did not play ball. One senator said, "this is Lagos, not London" with all the implication that this involved. Chief Anyaoku would not know how to offer a bribe, and if taught how to do it, would refuse to take the lesson. He was not African in that sense, he is essentially a man of the world, a Rennaissance man, a l'homme engage. When Chief Anyaoku was appointed secretarygeneral. The Igwes of Idemili area gave him a title Ugwumba Idemili (pride of Idemili).

The details of Chief Emeka Anyaoku's service in the Commonwealth constitute the subject of this book. The interesting thing is that there was a convergence of Nigeria's national interest and foreign policy objective with the personal mission of Chief Anyaoku. Nigeria's greatest achievement in international affairs was the decolonization of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Nigeria from 1960 to 1994 committed not less than one billion dollars to this project borne out of the realization that as long as Southern African's dignity was unrecognized on account of their colour, Nigeria suffered the same fate in spite of her own independence. In the process of doing this the Commonwealth was along with the OAU and the UN an important arena of Nigeria's foreign policy. Reading the book, the impression was wrongly created as if the achievement was that of the Commonwealth alone or as if the Commonwealth was the main instrument of decolonization. Not much would have been achieved without direct action of the liberation movements which were funded by the subscription of independent African governments and also by generous material donation by socialist countries who saw settler regimes not only anathema to egalitarian revolutionary principles but as vanguards of capitalist domination of the world. In the struggle for decolonization of Southern Africa and the dismantling of apartheid some countries in the Scandinavia also played some role in terms of moral and financial support.

As narrated by Chief Anyaoku, the Commonwealth which since the 1961 forced withdrawal of South Africa from the association provided a rallying point for the governments and peoples of the Commonwealth to confront the evil of racism in Southern Africa. Because those illegitimate regimes were based on the philosophy of racial superiority of the Whiteman over all others and to destroy these regimes the patent nonsense of this superiority had to be exposed. Some of the abiding principles of the Commonwealth were enunciated in the Singapore Declaration (1971), Harare Declaration (1991) and the Millbrook Commonwealth Action programme on the Harare Declaration 1995 and it was Chief Emeka Anyaoku who provided a link between the three declarations since he was involved in formulating the three of them. Running through all of them was the idea of equality of all peoples, democracy and development and the implied sanction on government that breached these Commonwealth principles. Once the principles were accepted it did not matter development and the implied sanction on government that breached these Commonwealth principles. Once the principles were accepted it did not matter 'whether it was Pakistan, Nigeria, Fiji, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe or South Africa itself that violated them. The Commonwealth was usually called upon to live up to its principles when these were breached by any member country or countries. In the process of doing this Chief Anyaoku was usually on the firing line experiencing triumph and failure and occasional trials in carrying out his assignment. A few examples would suffice.