Chief Arthur Mbanefo dies at 95
Chief Arthur Christopher Izuegbunan Mbanefo, MFR, CON, Odu has passed on at the ripe age of 95.
The elder Stateman was an accountancy, businessman, international diplomat, public policy formulator, educational administrator and philanthropist.
He was born in Onitsha on June 11, 1930 to the famous Mbanefo family, Arthur was educated at St. Patrick’s College, Calabar, and trained in the United Kingdom as a chartered accountant.
He trained and qualified as a chartered accountant in the United Kingdom in the mid-1950s and worked with respected accounting firms in Brighton and London.
In Nigeria, he worked the the accounting firm of Akintola Williams and Company, as a partner and served for 25 years before establishing his own management consultancy firm in 1986.
He had an excellent practice which earned him a leadership position in professional bodies like the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN.
A boardroom.mogul, Chief Mbanefo served on the boards of directors of numerous blue-chip companies including UAC of Nigeria Ltd., Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc, Reckitt & Coleman, Standard Flour Mills Ltd, and Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Ltd. Chief Mbanefo was a member of the Justice Ayo Irikefe Judicial Commission of Inquiry on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s Crude Oil Sales set up in 1980, and was chairman of the Committee on State Creation established in 1996, which led to the creation of six new states.
In 1999 he was appointed by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York where he succeeded in projecting Nigeria’s interests, maintain and develop existing alliances, and facilitate the creation of new ties.
He served as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos (1984-1986), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (1986-1990), and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1990-1993). Through these positions, he steered those institutions through some of their most challenging times, while ensuring that academic and moral standards were maintained.
He took an active part in the advocacy of the Biafran in which he was a key player in the General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu-led government of the short-lived Republic of Biafra.
He was Ojukwu’s envoy for the procurement of arms and fundraising in Europe and other parts of the world during the Nigerian civil war.
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