As a pupil, Emea Okwara Arua was notably inquisitive with a sense for justice and fair play that made him a thorn in the side of his English missionary teachers. The most remarkable and notable observation of this era of his impressionable years was that he was not as easily impressed by his white teachers as one would expect a boy to be in that time of British colonization. Emea could never comprehend why his teachers did not abide by the same commandments they gave the local children in the classrooms. He could not accept the punishment of his fellow pupils by these missionaries who would beat them with sticks, even when they had done nothing to merit such severity. As a result, the young Emea was a fount of questions that troubled his teachers without relief, to the extent that he was suspended from school for a period. Emea would eventually read the entire Bible for himself, an uncommon feat at the time, to learn its doctrines for himself, in order to better contradict his teachers and counter their prevarications.
For his secondary education, Emea then attended the most reputable and distinguished industrial training center of that period and location- the Hope Waddell Training Institute in Calabar. In keeping with the Institute’s famous motto: In Spe Gloria Dei- In Hope of the Glory of God, the Scottish Principal, J. A. T Beattie, ran the institute when Emea was a student there, from 1953 - 1957.
These are some notable Nigerian personalities who also attended this great institute:
- Dr. Eni Njoku – Former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos and University of Nigeria Nsukka
- Sir Francis Akanu Ibiam – Medical missionary, Former Governor of Eastern Region, Nigeria
- EyoIta – leader of the Eastern Government of Nigeria
- Nnamdi Azikiwe – Nigeria’s first President