Background
He was born on September 20, 1916 in Nigeria.
He was born on September 20, 1916 in Nigeria.
He was educated at the CMS school, Ugep and at Itigidi. In 1923 he entered the Hope Waddel Institute, Calabar, until 1927, and then went on to the Government College, Unushia. From 1934 to 1938 he was a student at the Higher College, Yaba, before leaving for Britain and studying anthropology at London University.
In 1946 he spent two more years as a research assistant and Assistant Lecturer at London University, while taking an active part in the Finchley branch of the British Labour Party and in the West African Students Union, becoming its General Secretary from 1949 to 1950 and then President.
He returned to Nigeria in 1951 and Was elected to the Eastern House of Assembly and the House of Representatives. He participated in all the Pre-independence constitutional conferences in London in 1953, 1954, 1957 and 1958.
He became Minister for Lands and Surveys and later Lands and Mines. He was defeated in the 1954 Federal elections and though he maintained his seat in the Eastern Region House, went back to Britain in 1955 to read law at Gray’s Inn, being called to the Bar in 1956. He returned home as a lawyer, teacher and academic administrator and remained in this field until the outbreak of the Biafran conflict.
In May 1967 he went with Chief Awolowo on a National Reconciliation Committee mission to Colonel Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, who snubbed the mission because Arikpo was an easterner who had opposed his stand.
But General Gowon liked him and recognised his abilities, making him Federal Commissioner for External Affairs in August 1967.
Arikpo's main task after the war was restoring diplomatic relations with those countries that had sided with Biafra, including Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon and the Ivory Coast and France. Relations with Britain had deteriorated during the war and Arikpo was particularly critical of the decision to resume arms sales to South Africa and Britain’s proposals for a settlement in Rhodesia. By November 1972, relationships had sufficiently improved for a visit, the first official visit by a minister of his rank, to Britain.
An elder of the Presbyterian Church, who quickly reveals his strong personality and all-round intellectual abilities. After starting as a politician in the early fifties, he spent a decade in the sixties as a teacher and academic administrator and was only thrust back into the political scene by his opposition to Ojukwu and his selection by General Gowon as his Foreign Affairs Commissioner. Though attracting little publicity, he was highly effective in this role and emerged at the Singapore Common-wealth Conference in January 1971, according to the writer John Hatch, “as the most impressive new Commonwealth personality”.