By C. Don Adinuba
It says a lot about the kind person Chief Charles C. Ifeanyi was that when he retired as the second or third person in the hierarchy of the entire Nigerian Customs Service, he had no house anywhere in the world. Most Nigerians would find this fact extremely difficult to accept because ours is what social scientists call a low-trust society, or a society with a very low stock of values like integrity, honour, loyalty, and trust. When we, however, remember that General Yakubu Gowon was our Head of State for nine years until he was overthrown in a military coup in 1975 and yet he had no house anywhere, or that Dr. Michael Okpara was the Eastern Region Premier from 1960 to 1966 but had nowhere to call his own house till 1983 when friends contributed money to build one for him in his village in today’s Abia State, you would begin to understand that Chief Ifeanyi was one of the few truly exceptional people to serve Nigeria with his own being. It is for people like him that the Bible says “he has come to serve ,and not to be served” (Matthew 20: 28).
It is also revealing enough of the Nigerian value system that Ifeanyi, who became the first southeasterner to serve on the Council of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) as its Deputy President after being for several years an executive director of the Leventis Group, had no national honour up to the time he breathed his last earlier this year. If Nigeria did not officially recognize the immense contributions of this technocrat whose brilliance saw him study economics at the University of Ghana on a Federal Government scholarship before independence and did postgraduate studies at the globally prestigious International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, God whom he served in truth and spirit, blessed him with excellent health, a good family, longevity, and an unimpeachable reputation.
His devotion to God shielded him from every vestige of official corruption. He saw God through the lens of his elder brother, Reverend Brother Benignus Ifeanyi, a teacher who in his youth renounced all earthly attractions to serve God and the Catholic Church as a religious. Chief Ifeanyi’s reason for not building a house even when he could easily afford it from his legitimate earnings was the fear of being suspected of any form of corruption by the brother. When the ascetic reverend gentleman saw him in a Mercedes Benz car in the early 1980s, he summoned him to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt how he came about it. Chief Ifeanyi went to every length to prove to his brother, a social monk who did everything to make all around him lead a holy life, that the Mercedes was his entitlement as an AG Leventis executive director.
The younger Ifeanyi’s Christian values led him to a life of forgiveness and a life without anger. When his close friends and associates disappointed him in the late 1990s in his race for the Union Bank chairmanship, he displayed incredible charity and nobility of heart. Anytime their disappointing action came up in a discussion, he laughed over it.
A great believer in nonprofits, Chief Ifeanyi was for many years the national president of the Old Boys Association of St Patrick’s College, Calabar, and his leadership style brought immense admiration from such distinguished alumni as Chief Victor Attah, a frontline architect and former Akwa State governor, and Chief Arthur Mbanefo, a foremost accountant, university administrator, and Nigeria’s erstwhile Permanent Representative at the United Nations. He was also the president of the Anambra State community in Lagos State and, ipso facto, Deputy President of Ndigbo Lagos. He was a 4th Degree knight of St Mulumba in the Catholic Church.
Despite his national stature, Chief Ifeanyi was deeply involved in the affairs of his Ihiala hometown where he was bestowed with the prestigious Ichie title in 1983 and consequently became a highly valued member of the royal cabinet. He was the founding chairman of the Ihiala Community Bank, and between 1980 and 1986 served as the president of the Lagos branch of the Ihiala Progress Union (IPU). A pan Nigerian, Chief Ifeanyi had no difficulty giving his daughter to a prince from the Ijebu community in Ogun State.
Adinuba was the Commissioner for Information & Public Enlightenment, Anambra State.
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