satisfy the Secretary-General's request. Anyaoku was among the three names suggested and was selected by the Prime Minister for secondment to the new Commonwealth secretariat. On arrival at the Secretariat in London in April 1966, Anyaoku was particularly impressed with the way the Secretary-General, Arnold Smith was handling the Rhodesia UDI issue. He was made Assistant Director of International Affairs which later became the Political Affairs Division. His first major assignment was to serve as Secretary of a Review Committee set up by the Secretary-General with the approval of Heads of Government to review all existing Commonwealth inter-governmental institutions with a view to determining which should be integrated into the newly established Commonwealth Secretariat. In July 1967 the Nigerian Civil War broke out. During that period, he and his wife hosted many separate luncheons and dinners in their London home for the Nigerian and Biafran representatives at the peace talks sponsored by the Secretary-General, Arnold Smith. In the middle of the talks, he told the Secretary-General that he was willing to travel home to speak with the Biafran leader, Emeka Ojukwu about the Secretary-General's peace proposals to the two warring parties. He and Ojukwu had been friends since their boyhood. Smith considered it a very risky venture but however, allowed Anyaoku to go. When he was embarking on the journey, his third child, Obi, who was just about three months old, was very ill in the hospital. The doctors were worried that he might not survive the ailment. When he told his wife, Bunmi, that he had to travel, she was shocked by his seeming insensitivity to their son's condition. Anyaoku told her, "there are many more in worse state, dying every day, in Biafra." She was speechless. Anyaoku left on a Red Cross flight to Nigeria via Amsterdam and Sao Tome. The day after his arrival at the Biafran enclave, he had a scary experience of a bomb raid during which he had to dive with his two interlocutors in the Biafran Foreign Ministry under the table. He eventually had a dramatic encounter with Ojukwu in his bunker at his headquarters. And when he left Biafra, after also seeing a number of his relations, he had a hair-raising exit on a flight that was evacuating children. It was an aircraft with no seats, which took off from Uli to Gabon. Anyaoku continued to be involved in various Commonwealth initiatives