OUR INDEPENDENCE
Like a tamed snake unskinning
Unskinning is easier for the untamed
Free from the hostilities of machinery
And the bush is wide and natural
Like a baby after the painful toil
Born fragile, crying for help
Until grown-a long often tedious course
Like a woman spending her wealth
For smooth skin that will never be sewn
What hot pain during this process
And what’s the aftermath?
The maturity of an African child
Is full dependence and sluggishness
Eighteen is of the European West
And a double is uncertain for ours
For we know not yet after forty years
Independence is a gradual growth
The ability to regard other existences
To note life as not for one man
To be ever ready to consider others’ right
Before the personal-the less necessary
This in the lucid eyes of those who know
Our masters fought for a hundred years
And France followed America
In its hard quest to unskin
Violence is truly unholy if indeed
We agree to be holy-to know and do
I weep my continent is yet not independent
Ethiopia, alone, stayed uncolonized, but what thence?
Liberia is over a hundred but dependent!
All, already born struggle to grow
Or already old struggle to unskin
Here at home, ours a dormant exercise
While illiteracy grips the Niger border
There live empty vessels-the day chameleons
In Benin and all within her zone
And the East-the insincere strugglers
Are seekers of contra-band independence
For three men have defiantly disagreed to agree
Embrace multi-disagreeable sounds
Or imported problematic creeds
A writer writes to entertain or educate
A farmer farms to feed the weak
A doctor protects and cures the sick
But the worst foes amongst our kind
Though may be hailed by dubious sycophants
The self-made-rulers or those enforced on us
Who only alter portfolios without new faces
In the blind demo-crazy of black nations
But we seem not to realize.
The price of it, guileful, looks cheap
Oppression, tyranny, we clamoured before
Let us be free for we are mature
Now the tears of our fathers’ joy
And the labour of our heroes past
Are pitilessly-woefully let in vain
And we ever claim to remember them
The Great Heroes are sobbing with hot tears
In their graves for the foil of their sweat
Arise fathers, arise Lion Hearted Men.
Arise Azik, arise Balewa, arise Bello, arise Awo
Arise Nkrumah, arise Kenyatta, arise Nassir
Arise Sankara, arise Nyerere, where art thou, Mandela
Arise fathers! Arise fathers! Fathers of strength!
OOOOOOOOOO arise, arise, arise, arise, arise…
Hear the wail of departed lover
And turn this scrambling land to what we like
But have poor feat to attain
Scram! Ye traitors of uncertain fate
Hollow effeminate hearts with savage flairs
Allow the breeze to invite breeding rain
To smoothen the soil for new crops to grow
And only the unstained new crops
Can pay the cost of our dear independence
But which land can they peacefully grow?
Is it where our potentials are impotent?
The improper imposed, the proper deposed
Millions screening for where to sweat and feed
While only tens stride, relax and feed fat
Undeserved, yet with no or little toil?
And our lashings gyrate within their stingy hands!
Is it where laxity overflows our schools?
The primary has no system, the secondary a foil
And the university-a striking point
Where students, proving to be fully mature
Are left to the Devil and Mysteries
And the teachers only wait the end of months
Education is not well with us
Our homes don’t check, our schools don’t curb us
And our students for wanton enjoyment
Enjoy the random strikes and rustications
Chasing, seducing, rioting and ranting
While they that manage to wallow through
Persevering with unflinching will and zeal
Heckle their poor souls at the end
‘What for all these toils, my Lord?’
The price of it, guileful, looks cheap
We can shift names, OAU can become AU
Like a tamed snake unskinning
Unskinning is easier for the untamed
Our eyes are open, our ears alert
Our tongues ready, our limbs dependent
We are ready to start it all again
ODE TO MY INDEPENDENCE HEROES
O fathers and mothers of the glorious past!
Today your posterity shed tears of joy
In remembrance of that day yours of pain
Won the victory for our dear dear home
May your lone homes wherever they are
Be turned to the Gardens of Eden
And your noble souls might and broad
Be in divine perfect peace
Inspire in us the refined thought
The strength, the love and selflessness
That we may serve with full knowledge
Nigeria - our African Pride
These we ask O Lord of the World!
On this day of merriment.