Msonter Anzaa is a medical doctor, talented writer and speaker who has been participating in essay competitions and academic quizzes since his primary school days. His simmering passion for the media was born in his junior secondary school days when he began to read his father’s collection of newspapers and news magazines. He cultivated this further and became President of the Press Club at Federal Science College, Ogoja, in his senior secondary school days. The Press Club was unarguably the most active club in the college during his days, his impact being so outstanding that the patron of another club in the same school once asked him to go over and be its president.
Although fully cast in the sciences and aspiring to read Medicine and Surgery at the university, Msonter Anzaa continued to wield his pen – being mightier than sword. In 2009 he founded his first blog, Office of the Citizen, where he expressed his opinion regularly on national issues. The same year, his first article was published in The Nation Newspaper. The following year, he joined Kwande Source News – a community newspaper –in 2010 as staff writer. The following year, as an undergraduate medical student of Benue State University, he joined The Nation Newspaper as a campus correspondent and opinion writer, his first published story being his classmates’ matriculation ceremony. He wrote for The Nation Newspaper until his graduation, nine years later. During this period, he also briefly wrote for Vanguard Newspaper in the same capacity.
Dr. Anzaa is a voracious essayist who participated in several and won a number of national and local writing competitions, notable among which include the National Tertiary Essay Competition organized by the Sigma Club of the University of Ibadan (2016), the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria National Undergraduate Essay Competition (2018) and the Olusoji Akinwande Development Foundation National Essay Competition (2019). He has also written on several online platforms in various capacities.
In addition to his academic qualifications, he has certifications including a Diploma in Graphics and Data Processing from the Barnafel Information and Technology Institute, Gboko, Certificate in Web Design from I-Compliance, Makurdi, and Certificates of Attendance of Writing Workshops from The Nation Newspaper, Lagos.
Dr. Anzaa is also active in leadership, being Deputy Head Boy in the primary school, Security Prefect in the secondary school (where he was awarded the Most Outstanding Prefect of the Year Award in 2008), being a leader for two years in the students’ arm of his local chapter of the Christian Medical and Dental Association of Nigeria (CMDA Nigeria), and serving many times as a Member at the Benue State University Medical Students’ Association (BESUMSA) and the Students’ Union Houses of Parliament.
He is a patriot who believes in the future of Africa through selfless, transparent, and people-oriented leadership. He enjoys reading biographies, memoirs, newspapers and political history, and believes the words of Nelson Mandela – “You do not lead by your position, but by the strength of your ideas.”