The Kingdom Of Freedom Poem by Abdulbasit Abubakar Adamu

I was brought up to know we had independence
I grew up knowing we were filled with freedom
Since the art and act of slavery was prosecuted,
With the black rope at the birth of the Royal Niger Company
We chameleon into goats freed from ropes
But yet locked and barricaded in studs.
We, through time, became vast like the skies and it's blue
Moulded and carved like isolated sculptures
We were distracted from each other, carried away too
Unguarded, unguided from everything we do
We kept pointing at each other, fingers no longer five now six
The reality of this life, with a couple of hands we can't fix
Till we are all ready to wake up from this ancestral jinx

Freedom is not divorcing slavery and colonialism
Rather, in our ability to see our scars in the mirror
Mark ourselves right, bold enough to score ourselves zero
It is our ability to kill injustice and organise mass burials
The ability to see holes and fill it in with mass communications
For it is only with this we can build mass infrastructures
And only with this, will our heart not be ruptured
From the vampires that reside within us, ready to suck our blood.

Freedom doesn't lie in chains and cuffs
It lies in our legs, hands, eyes and hearts
It resides in our ability to zoom in our binocular eyes
Seeing the arrows aiming to strike our society
It lies in our hearts detesting these arrows
And walks with our legs for a transformational jog
And our hands to catch and break these arrows
Freedom lies in conflict resolution and finding solutions.

Now the big question is,
Are you free and independent?