Remembering The Queen From The Eyes Of 3 Million Biafran Children

“Missionaries had noticed mothers emerging from the deep bush carrying children reduced to living skeletons yet with bloated bellies. Catholic priests recognized the symptoms – kwashiorkor or acute protein deficiency.

As for me, sometimes in the wee small hours, I see the stick-like children with the dull eyes and lolling heads, and hear their wails of hunger and the low moans as they died.”

  – Fredrick Forsyth

Afó September 12

2022

It’s been four market days after the Queen of the English empire finally surrendered to mortality. It has raised conversations from people across the length and breadth of the earth but I chose to think about this as a Biafran.

As an Igbo child whose ancestors were murdered in millions because they wanted their own republic, away from the shambolic British creation called Nigeria, I choose to remember my people, the starving and dying children who the then Prime minister of the UK Harold Wilson described as “Nigger Children”. I also remember the silence of the crown while they sat in the palace watching on TV, millions of starving Biafran children tired of chasing house- flies from their faces and bodies, lying naked on the bare floor waiting for death to whisk them away.

There is an Igbo adage that says “Onye gbara nkiti kwere ekwe”. This adage should open the eyes of every Igbo person who remembers the silence of the late Queen and how that participatory silence fanned the embers of war in Biafra. The first war that was televised in the world happened in eastern Nigeria and the world watched the horror and pain of a people for 30 months while the Queen sat pretty on her throne, enjoying the horror show in Biafra.  Even after her silence began to raise questions, she still didn’t speak of it or address it in anyway.

When John Lennon, Beatles star heard of what was happening in Biafra and found out that Britain had a hand in the genocide, he asked what the crown was doing about the situation. When he discovered that the Queen knew about everything in more intricate details than what he saw on TV, he was shocked, embarrassed and ashamed of Britain. In November of 1969, when the war had already lasted for some two years, John Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen “In protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing..”

Akanu Ibiam, an Igbo Medical doctor who was knighted by the Queen wrote the most heartbreaking letter to the Queen;

“YOUR MAJESTY,

The British officials in Nigeria are fully aware of all these. They know that we are an injured and deeply grieved people and had been cruelly treated by our erstwhile fellow citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria. The British officials not only knew the crux of the matter, but they also encouraged Northern Nigeria to carry out and execute their nefarious plan against us.

They are angry with Biafra because Biafra categorically refused to remain as part of the Nigeria federation and political unit only to be trampled upon, discriminated against and hated, ruthlessly exploited and denied her rights and privileges, and slaughtered whenever it suited the whims and caprices of the favoured people of Northern Nigeria.

To add insult to injury, Your Majesty’s Britannic Government, instead of being neutral in our quarrels or finding ways and means to mediate and bring peace to the two countries, has now taken it upon herself to supply military aid to Nigeria to help them defeat and subjugate Biafra.

It is simply staggering for a Christian country like Britain to help a Moslem country militarily to crush another Christian country like Biafra. This is just too much for me, Your Gracious Majesty, this act of unfriendliness and treachery by the British Government towards the people of Republic of Biafra who, as Eastern Nigerians, had so much regard for Britain and British people.

In the circumstance, Your Majesty, I no longer wish to wear the garb of the British Knighthood. British fair play, British justice, and the Englishman’s word of honour which Biafra loved so much and cherished have become meaningless to Biafrans in general and to me in particular. Christian Britain has shamelessly let down Christian Biafra.

I love the Republic of Biafra very dearly and pray that, by grace of God, she may remain and continue to grow and live and always act like a truly Christian country for all times.

I am, your Majesty

Yours Most Respectfully

(AKANU IBIAM)”

What shocked Akanu Ibiam was that while  Igbo Anglican faithful were praying to a God introduced to them in the name of a Christian Crown in Britain, the same Crown was supplying Howitzers, tanks, and jet fighters to Muslim hordes to bombard, rape, and pillage their land. It was an irony that wasn’t lost on Mazi Akanu Ibiam. He didn’t know how to understand the insanity and he returned the Knightly properties of the Queen back to her because she had the power to stop the war but didn’t.

Yet, amidst the different cries to the Queen about the people of Biafra, especially the women and children, she oversaw the pogrom, supervised the horror, and didn’t for one day apologize or at least, acknowledge that there is a suppressed agitation in the eastern region of Nigeria.

This is how I chose to remember Queen Elizabeth the Second. Like a slave remembers her master, with apprehension, pain, and memories of wickedness.

Obumneme Osuchukwu is a culture journalist, dibia, and a frustrated Nigerian writer. He prefers to scream out what other people say in hushed tones. 

He tweets @markosuchukwu 

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