Akanu Ibiam

Akanu (Francis) Ibiam (born November 29, 1906 in Unwana , Nigeria , † July 1, 1995 ) was a Nigerian doctor , missionary and politician . He was governor of the province of Eastern Nigeria from 1960 to 1967. From 1961 to 1970 he was President of the World Council of Churches .

Life

Ibiam was born in Unwana, about 15 kilometers south of the city of Afikpo in what is now Ebonyi State, the son of a local chief . In 1919 he was baptized in the name of Francis, in accordance with the custom of the time to take a "Christian name" (that is, a name in the language of the colonial rulers) at baptism. After he was accepted to study science at King's College in Lagos in 1921 , he later went to the UK to study medicine . In 1934 he graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in medicine.

When he returned to Nigeria in 1935, he had decided to become a missionary doctor. Under the auspices of the Church of Scotland Mission or its Nigerian branch, the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria , he opened a rural hospital in Abribra , which he expanded more and more in the following years, understanding it, financial support from both the government and from Preserve churches, including the Presbyterian Church of Canada . As a doctor who grew up in Nigeria, Ibiam knew that he had to accompany the use of Western medicine in his patients with spiritual assistance in the form of prayers. In this way he strengthened the rural population's confidence in Western medicine.

In 1958 Ibiam interrupted his medical career to accept a post as the first Nigerian rector of the prestigious Hope Waddell Training Institution in Calabar , an elite school in southern Nigeria. His church engagement went further. In the same year he convened an ecumenical conference of African churches in Ibadan , from which two years later the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) emerged, an ecumenical institution for the development and cooperation of churches and politics in Africa. In 1960 Akanu was elected President of the World Council of Churches.

Politically, Ibiam was active as a council member in the colonial regional council of Afikpo since 1940. He later became a government councilor in Lagos and in 1951 was elected to the congress of the colonial administrative district of eastern Nigeria. After Nigeria's independence in 1960, he became governor of the eastern region. With the secession of Biafras and the civil war that followed in 1967, Ibiam lost his post as governor. As chairman of the World Council of Churches, he first went to Geneva to speak for the Biafras cause and to draw attention to the genocide of his Igbo people . He strongly condemned British support for Nigeria in the civil war; as a protest he gave his from King George VI. awarded medal as a Knight of the British Empire and also dropped his first name Francis. After Biafra surrendered, Akanu was assured of safe conduct in Nigeria by the military dictator Yakubu Gowon . He returned immediately to take part in the reconstruction and initially acted as an advisor to the military government for the eastern provinces of Nigeria.

Ibiam Akanu was a member of numerous international medical, academic, church and political institutions and received various honors.

Publications

• What About Africa? 1961.

literature

• Agwu Kalu: Dr. Ibiam ... the Challenge of His Life. Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, Aba 1988.

Web links

• Emele Mba Uka: Ibiam, Akanu. In: Dictionary of African Christian Biography. 2001, accessed March 30, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emele Mba Uka: Ibiam, Akanu. (No longer available online.) In: Dictionary of African Christian Biography. 2001, archived from the original on March 31, 2017 ; accessed on March 30, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.