After obtaining his West African School Certificate/Cambridge, and graduating from the Hope Waddell Training Institute in 1957, the teenaged Emea travelled to Lagos, to his father’s relative, a director with the Prisons Division of the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs. Lagos in the 60’s was an ordered and well-painted city with a smaller population, and more manageable traffic, than it has today. Emea did an apprenticeship in the Prison Division of the Internal Affairs Ministry, working first as a Third Class Clerk (Accounts), before being promoted to Acting Executive Officer (Accounts), between 1958 - 1963. During this period, the astute Emea also acquired his General Certificate of Education (A’ Levels) by correspondence, and obtained, also through correspondence, the Membership Grade, Grad-ICSA, at the Corporation of Secretaries Institute in London.
In 1963, then in his twenties, Emea’s entry won the first prize in the International Competition organized by Radio Prague, Czechoslovakia, on the essay theme: My Experience of Colonialism in Africa. He also applied that year, with his paternal cousin, the late Dr. Obuba Ndukwe, for the Czechoslovakia Government Foreign Aid Scholarship to African Countries for University Education. He was successful and was offered a place to study. Thus, at the age of 25, Emea left for Czechoslovakia to study Sociology and Co-operative Agriculture at the University of 17th November, and Charles University, both in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
The Czechoslovakia Emea met when he arrived in the year 1963, was one on the verge of a De-Stalinization process. This was a political exercise aimed at evolving the socio-economic structure of Czechoslovakia with reforms targeting the hardline communism that had debilitated her for almost two decades.
His arrival in the thousand-year old, historical city of Prague, and his initial studies at the University of 17th November, were periods of awkward strangeness for Emea. Though his lectures at the university were in English, all foreign students were required to study Czech for twelve months. After three months of study, Emea had mastered the language and he decided, quite practically, that he had had enough. His reason was simple. He had come to Prague to study Sociology and Co-operative Agriculture. His lectures were all rendered in the English language- the study of the Czech language was an unnecessary distraction. Without further delay, Emea complained to the university authorities, approaching them in the customary patient and reasonable manner that would remain a distinct feature of his personality. He explained that he had come for undergraduate studies at the university where the lectures were in English. He had not come to Prague to study Czech. Upon passing a Czech language test, which he was thereafter, made to take, he was then permitted exceptionally, to continue his studies without any further encumbrances. Emea acquired a Diploma in Social Sciences, eventually winning the Best Student of the Year Awards in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the years 1967 and 1968. He received the prestigious Czechoslovakia Fellowship Award in 1970, and in 1971, he won the Rector’s (or Vice-Chancellor’s) Prize for the best Ph.D. Student of the Year.
Emea Okwara Arua was an Honors Student in both his Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics, which he obtained at Charles University in 1969, and in his Master’s degree in Sociology, which he obtained at the University of 17th November, also in 1969. He scored distinctions in both his doctoral degree dissertations and the oral defence examinations. Emea was awarded a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology in 1971.