Our Cry

Many a times have we craved for a home

Even in the land of our ancestral fathers.

Innocence, the charisma of any new offspring

That used to be our personality


Many a times have we cried to be loved

But what we get is love for what we have.

Together we fought on the frontiers of colonialism

Divided we share the spoils of freedom.

Together we once cried under the whips of our white masters

Till present WE still do

From the lashings of our black masters.

Forgetting how we cried in unison at Badagry.

There was once brotherhood in bondage

But now they marginalize in freedom.

The big three they call them

Scraping and scorching

Even to the last morsels in our mothers’ havens.

Kill us they won’t

But prefer to watch us die instalmentally

They harvest from our lands

Leaving our children to their fate

Our fathers sell meat yet we feed on bones

Our mothers ply the textile trade

Yet our tattered rags flaunt our nakedness.

They wine and dine from the vigour of our land

Leaving us below the poverty line.

We all sing the anthem

But OUR voice echo a million times

Creating a confused babble of voices

In a barrel of emptiness.

We are the nation’s wealth

But our homeland is a refugee camp.

We are called citizens but treated like aliens.

We shed tears that now is blood

Feed on meat that now are corpse

Shelter in huts that love the rain

And clothe in cloth that no longer cloths.

This is our cry,

From where cometh our refuge?