Title: To Serve and to be Honoured on Merit
Author: Georgina Ehuriah-Arisa
Publisher: Prestige, Kachifo
Year: 2020
Pages: 481
Reviewer: Nathaniel Bivan

One of Ehuriah-Arisa’s role models while growing up was her grandmother, Ezinne Uloju Nnochiri.

That strong lineage is underscored in the remarks of the author in the opening pages of the book on Uzuakoli women -”famous for their independence… determined, resolute and truly resilient.”

On October 1, 2020, the author’s over three-decade career in public service came to a glorious end.

‘On Merit’ is her recollection of how she rose through the ranks and made the best of a career she never knew she would go into as a university student.

This book is both a celebration of her rise and that of womanhood.

The writer begins by painting a picture of her formative years.

She was born in Uzuakoli in 1962 to the family of Chief Anosike and Mrs Mary Ihedinma Alaukwu, Georgina, and grew up in the university town of Nsukka, where her father worked.

But it wasn’t the ideal childhood she had hoped for.

The Nigerian Civil War broke out in 1967, and her family fled Enugu to their hometown, Uzuakoli, in desperation.

But Umuahia, which was the capital of Biafra, came under attack. Uzuakoli was located only a few kilometers away.

For a child at that tender age, it was jarring to hear “the devilish staccato music of machine guns and the punctuating booms from heavy artillery guns” exploding (p.25).

Thus, the distressed family had to take refuge in the forest of Uzuakoli, far from their dwelling place.

However, one day, when they thought they were out of harm’s way, young Georgina, only seven years old then, fell into the hands of federal troops as she was fetching water from the stream and she was taken to where her parents and others had been rounded up.

She recounts how her family survived the war, amid heavy military presence, and how captured Igbo women were raped and married against their will.

Nsukka was in terrible shape when they returned in 1970.

However, she was able to begin her pre-primary education at Saint John’s Primary School, Nsukka, aged 8.

Her brilliance was noticed midway into primary school, and, in Elementary 5, she had to leave her mates behind to sit for Common Entrance and came out in flying colours to begin her secondary education at the prestigious Queen of the Rosary Secondary School (QRSS), Nsukka.

She read anything she could lay her hands on, no matter how voluminous they were and was a member of the debating and drama society.

Her love for reading and writing was to prove useful later in life.

The University of Benin was her first choice when she sat for JAMB.

Her father convinced her to dump her first love, Sociology and Anthropology, so she opted for law and English as first and second choices respectively.

But it was her second choice, English, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, that came her way.

Luckily for her, it exposed her to some of the best intellectuals Africa had to offer in literary studies, from Professor Chinua Achebe famous for ‘Things Fall Apart’ to Professor Donatus Nwoga, who authored ‘The West African Verse’.

Here, again, she was among the best students in the Department, alongside Esiaba Irobi, who won the Nigeria Prize for Literature posthumously not too long ago.

Ehuriah-Arisa tells us of her deep interest in drama at Nsukka.

It came as little surprise, therefore, when, during holidays in Lagos, the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, caught her attention.

Among those she met were Lari William and Ajayi Lycett.

If she had her way, she would have been a thespian, but that was never to be.

Aside wishing to be an actor, she also wanted to be an academic, for she had the grades and dispositions to impact knowledge.

Two individuals were instrumental to making her take a different path in her walk to a stable future after the mandatory youth service in 1984.

The first was her drama teacher, Professor Ossie Enekwe, who told her the academia and thespian world did not offer a secure life in Nigeria of the 1980s, and advised her to go into civil service.

The second voice was that of her father’s younger brother, Vincent Iroeche Patrick Alaukwu, an administrative officer per excellence in the Federal Civil Service in the 1970s and 80s.

At this point, the book takes us on an exciting trip to the author’s years of labour, adversities and fulfilment.

Amid all this echoes a tenacity of purpose and a crave for excellence.

Her first job was that of an Administrative Officer VIII, and a stickler for diligence, almost always got herself into trouble because her older colleagues weren’t governed by the same ideals of punctuality and honesty.

The author’s personal motivation to join the Federal Civil Service was a dream of getting an international job with a multinational organisation or the United Nations.

She kept bettering herself whenever there was an opportunity.

That saw her learning French in a neighbouring francophone country and getting a postgraduate degree in Public Administration.

To cap it all, she added a law degree from the University of Lagos to her resume.

In a society where ethnicity, religion and gender influences sometimes influence who gets what, the writer opted for hard work and allowed fate to run her race. Several times, she was overlooked for promotion, yet her spirit was never broken. This made her more steadfast in her duties and resolute in pursuit of knowledge. Not every civil servant would attain the level of a permanent secretary in their lifetime and not all would last till retirement age, but she did.

She started out in the Ministry of Defence and moved on to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Cabinet Affairs Office, the Ecological Fund Office, Education Ministry, Mines and Steel Development before retiring at the Ministry of Interior this October, as a permanent secretary.

It’s important to note that Ehuriah-Arisa is a silent achiever.

Her awards include institutional and national awards.

In Page 22, she reveals the part she played in creating Nigeria’s first global standard pandemic response plan:

“I have always felt a sense of pride that I was part of the team that developed the National Plan, which was Nigeria’s first global standard pandemic preparedness response plan and was the precursor to other response plans that were developed and deployed to respond effectively to more virulent outbreaks such as Ebola.”

She ought to have retired in 2019, having put up to 35 years of service to the nation, but she was pleasantly surprised when President Muhammadu Buhari extended her service by a year, from October 1, 2019 to October 1, 2020, alongside a few others.

The president wanted more time for their experience to be passed on to the next generation, and there is no better way to bow out than to leave Nigerians with a gift, so every reader knows that indeed you can get to the top of Nigeria’s civil service on merit.

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