Anthony Ukpabi Asika (28 June 1936 – 14 September 2004) was a Nigerian academic and civil servant.

Anthony Ukpabi Asika (28 June 1936 – 14 September 2004) was a Nigerian academic and civil servant.

Anthony Ukpabi Asika (28 June 1936 – 14 September 2004) was a Nigerian academic and civil servant.

🤰He was born in Onitsha in modern-day Anambra State on 28 June 1936.

🎩 His father was Edward Obiozo Asika of the Ijelekpe Dynasty in Ogbeoza Village, Onitsha.

🎓 He was educated at Methodist College Uzuakoli in Abia State, Edo College and University College, now the University of Ibadan.

🎓 Asika studied at the University of California, Berkeley in the US from 1961 to 1965 and then became a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Ibadan between 1965 and 1967. He was an erudite scholar.

💼 He worked as:

📞 Clerk of Onitsha Town Council (1953)

📞 Clerk in the Department of Marketing and Export, Lagos,

📞 Clerk at the Northern Nigeria Marketing Board, Kano.

💺He was appointed administrator of East-Central State in October 1967 at the start of the Biafran civil war, theoretically based in Enugu which in fact was the capital of the breakaway state.

📻 Biafran radio used the nickname “Lord Haw Haw” for Asika, who was a pro-federal Igbo intellectual.

🔀 After the war ended in 1970 he was responsible for administering a large part of the former Biafran territories.

🔀 His administration was said to be starved of funds. He was strongly opposed to the creation of new states.

💺While governor, he was also a member of the Technical Committee on the Review of the National Census from 1973 to 1975.

💺He later was Team Leader of the Presidential Delegation to Niger, Chad and Cameroun which negotiated re-opening Nigeria borders in 1985.

🥺 Asika suffered a stroke in 1996, requiring extensive medical care, and was incapacitated from then on.

💔 He died on 14 September 2004.

❤️ Asika was married to late Chief Mrs. Chinyere Asika, and the couple had three children.