How can a captured people have an independent nation? Dele Farotimi

Take a look at your freedom,
Tormented and trampled under their feet
Arms held in cuffs behind your bent back.
Caged, it whimpers for help
It sees the sun rising from afar but the rays stay far away.
Is this your celebrated freedom?

There lies your freedom
In a heated romance with oppressors
Held captive by those you call your own
Tightly bound by the chains of inhumanity.
Tell me, is this the freedom you wish for your unborn children?

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Smashed in the head like the unmoving body of a stray snake crushed to a pulp
Your freedom vindicates vices and caresses corruption.
Liberated from the preying eyes of the colonisers
But the ones whose tribal blood proclaims you as one hold you to ransom.

You are free but you are not totally free from the cruel cudgels of your kinsmen.
Are you truly free if bigotry holds your hands in chains?
Are you truly free if your rulers squash your dreams with the bromance they share with corruption?

Only a few have dined and wined with freedom;
And only a few will taste freedom tomorrow.
But tell me, how will the forgotten masses dance to the flute of freedom?
With their bellies flattened by hunger and their bones broken under the yoke of generational poverty?

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Giant of Africa, for how long will you punish your own?
Your greatness looks so small when bound in shackles of selfishness.
Mother thinks the land is free, but her children are loyal clients of poverty.

Freedom is a strange language on the lips of a captured people;
It is a taboo to those whose prosperity had long been stolen.
Giant of Africa, do you hear the song of this caged freedom?
It softly beckons on you for redemption.