The Commonwealth Of What? Poem by Emeka GOC

The Commonwealth of What?
The Blood of Biafran children? ? ?



The public face wore robes of peace, a Commonwealth design,
Common corruption and pillage of African wealth
Common plot of devastation of Biafran peoples health
While secret pens in Whitehall drew the crushing battle line.

They spoke of neutral mediation under London's sky,
Aburi accord, British view, was dead on arrival,
British island did not want Biafran to survival
While ships of steel and crates of lead ensured the state would die.

To keep the false, forced unity of one Nigerian state,
The Crown became the architect of young Biafra's fate.
The driving force was liquid gold inside the delta mud,
Where Shell-BP secured its fields in promises of blood.

When desert wars in sixty-seven parched the British shore,
They needed Niger oil to fuel the domestic engine's roar.
They feared a sovereign nation might reclaim its native soil,
So diplomats traded human lives to guarantee the oil.

They claimed they sent but policing tools to keep a domestic peace,
While covert shipments grew so vast the gunfire could not cease.
From armoured cars to millions of rounds of heavy ammunition,
They fed the Lagos war machine to force a swift submission.

And when the brutal blockade came, and hunger turned to bone,
The Ministers in parliament maintained a heart of stone.
A million starving children wept beneath a blackened sky,
While Harold Wilson spun the web to let the truth pass by.

They feared the domino effect across the map they made,
They feared the Soviet MiG jets, they feared the French brigade.
So leverage became the lie, the sanctimonious shield,
To mask the cynical supply that stained the Biafran field.

They choked a nation till it fell in January's cold,
Then stepped across the silent graves to watch the oil unfold.
Now the ink is dry on paper, written in the Whitehall halls
, A calculator's metric where the map of empire falls.

Since January seventy, when the guns at last grew cold,
The official line is drawn in ink, in silence, and in gold.
They guard the line of 'One Nigeria, ' rigid and severe,
While the ghosts of Old Biafra hum a song they will not hear.

The diplomats in London trace the borders of Abuja,
And lock the desk on history to protect the corporate future.
No pardon for the hunger, no confession for the blockade,
No looking back at iron bombs or promises unmade.

When modern voices rise to ask for self-determination,
The state replies with distance, and a nod to preservation.
They watch the case of Kanu through a pane of tinted glass,
A calculated friction that they pray will safely pass;

A British passport held inside a cold Nigerian cell,
Where legal duties whisper what the state refuses to tell.
Yet walk the streets of London, past the grey institutional gate,
And see a vibrant nation that survived the hands of fate.

Away from geopolitical chess and oil-driven design,
The Igbo spirit flourishes, rewriting every line.
In the corridors of hospitals where healing hands are found,
In the lecture halls of colleges where brilliant minds abound,

In finance, law, and literature, the triumphs start to gleam,
Woven deep and lasting into the modern British fabric.
The words of Achebe echo through the universities,
And Chimamanda's verses challenge ancient histories.

For while the Crown keeps silent, the public learns to read
The declassified archives of a calculated greed.
The BBC and Guardian turn the yellowed pages o'er,
Uncovering the shadows of that post-colonial war.

And a modern British empathy begins to take its place,
Beholding all the sorrow that the state cannot erase.
Two worlds exist in tandem beneath the British sky:
A government that looks away, a public asking why;

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been incaserated in a crest
None of the British 5 British PMs has shown interest
A state that guards a border out of economic fear,
And a diaspora rising, loud, industrious, and clear.

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is held in a crest,
While five British leaders ignore the unrest.
A state guards its borders from economic fear,
While a diaspora rises, loud, bold, and clear.

Beyond the deep guilt of the colonial past,
Three million Biafrans starved to the last
—Mostly young children, a tragic, dark stain,
Like the shadows of 1939 and Hitler's reign.