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Breaking barriers

My story,and what I learnt about vision

Law & Society Magazine
By Law & Society Magazine
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By Kingsley Moghalu

I decided at age 13 that I would have a global career in the international civil service of the United Nations. My friends in secondary school laughed at me and called me a “dreamer”. Later, at the Law Faculty of University of Nigeria Nsukka (Enugu Campus) I would make sure I sat behind the class, reading TIME magazine as a particular professor of a particularly boring law subject droned on (needless to say I didn’t do particularly well in his exams!).

I joined the UN at 29. In the 16 years in between, my vision never wavered. In Lagos, where, after my National Youth Service Corps assignment as a Legal Officer in Shell Petroleum, I was on my first job as General Counsel of Newswatch Communications, publishers of the leading newsmagazine Newswatch at the time, I passed up a chance to join a new bank in Lagos to go abroad for a master’s in 1991. “You are too idealistic Chiedu”, an older friend and wealthy businessman who was dangling this banking-job prospect told me. “Sit down in Lagos and let us make money!”

But I knew exactly what I wanted and where I was going, and applied the principle of delayed gratification – the long view. When I wrote to the US Embassy in Lagos that I’d been accepted at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston and needed a visa, they were impressed. “Many of our best were trained there”, I was told.

“Just send your passport over”. I did. They returned it with a student visa stamped on it and a travel grant to cover my ticket plus some change. I left for the US without physically touching foot at the embassy, with a ticket they bought for me, and joined the UN straight from my master’s degree at The Fletcher School (I later did my doctorate part-time at the London School of Economics while working in the UN system in Geneva).

A full 18 years later I returned home as a Deputy Governor at the Central Bank of Nigeria. That wasn’t part of the original plan, but we are not in total control of our lives, and sometimes destiny plays out in ways unforeseen. The rest, including returning to the elite institution as a professor after my tenure at CBN, is history.

Have a vision. Hold it in front of your mind’s eye, work hard, and look unto God. The vision may tarry awhile, but it will be realized in due time.

God does not come down to earth to intervene, but acts through human beings for His Will to come to pass. And so there are, of course, other players-destiny helpers – in my story: my late father Isaac Moghalu for one, who strongly encouraged my interest in world affairs when he noticed I had that passion early on. Ray Ekpu, then CEO and Co-founder of Newswatch with the late Dele Giwa, Dan Agbese, and Yakubu Mohammed – “the quartet”. Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, our former Foreign Minister (and an alumnus of The Fletcher School) whose intervention with the prestigious institution after I approached him with my admission letter helped me secure the Joan Gillespie Fellowship that covered my tuition. Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, then of The Guardian, who, along with Ray, provided professional and character references to the US Embassy.

There were Rafeeuddin Ahmed of Pakistan and Dr. Shashi Tharoor of India (now Member or Parliament of India and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee) two senior UN officials in those days who also were alumni of The Fletcher School (“The Fletcher mafia”). Both were instrumental to my joining the UN. Of course there was also the late Kofi Annan, my boss in my early years in the Organization even before he later became Secretary-General.

There was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now Muhammadu Sanusi II, ex-Emir of Kano, who recommended me to President Umaru Yar’Adua for appointment as his deputy at the CBN, a recommendation backed up strongly by Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. And then there was Admiral (Dr.) James Stavridis (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, who, as Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, hired me as a Professor of Public Policy at the institution after my time at CBN.

May God bless these men and women.

The point is that hard work matters. Integrity and character matter. People are more inclined to support people who’s hard work and track record already speaks to their potential. And one has also met rejections – several – along the way. So don’t think it’s just one straight-line story. No. But, always, my advice is to be focused, and keep your eye on the price, whatever that price is for you.

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