The Territory They Now Call Nigeria by Deji ONADEKO

I'm From a territory the white man called Nigeria ...
I'm From a race the white man called black ...
I sing an anthem cause the white man called it nice ...
I'm only deserving to earn if the white man calls me wise ...

Now I speak a language my fore fathers never heard before...
And I wear cloths my fore fathers never envisaged ...

Now, if you don't speak his language, you are dumb or ambiguously put, uneducated ...
And if you've never visited his country, O' you are unexposed ...

They are the standard by which we live by ...
If he doesn't think its good enough, then it isn't good enough...

I fed on cocoa, groundnunts, cassava and bitter cola ...
I drank palmwine and cooked with my local source, iru, with a smile on my face I did everything in pace ...
And when the disease the white man now calls malaria and chicken pox  killed any of us,
We cried, mourned and paid homeage to our gods and then moved on ...

I told my children our stories, taught them on slabs and rocks,
we loved life and life was good ... only that the white man convinced us that it was not good enough ...

Indeed the white man brought me health and wealth ...
But the richer and healthier we got, slowly from brotherly love we fell ...

So the life he showed me was maybe right,
But it was not without a price ...

The white man showed me oil, black oil, he called it, I thought it was cause he found it in black soil, but it is actually black, I figured ...

He promised me a better life, better than the one I already had ...
Indeed life was better, but also bitter ...
Bitter with strife, greed and anger ...
Now the man or tribe that had more of this black stuff was richer ...

And then, I learnt to war, I killed with the white man's gun, in my tribe, we called it "igi apayan" meaning the stick that kills ...

Then I began to fight against those I once called brother ...
And indeed life got better
But also harder ...

Now the stories my grandfather told me, I'm afraid to tell ...
And even if I did, I should have learnt the white man's history well ...

I read Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka but also I have got to read enough of William Shaskespaer before I'm called literally sound ...
And I'm wondering sincerely, how much do they know of here ...

They know we are black and that we were once slaves.
They know about our natural resources, our extra man power and strength ...
They know we are a third world nation, a developing state, a state that needs aid and help from poverty and obscurity ..

But for our history, all they remember is the berlin conference,
And anything before then is unworthy of reverence ...

I have not denied The great deal of good the white man's invasion caused us ...

But I want to know more ...

I want to know what my fore fathers called africa before the white man called it africa ...

I want to know what my grandfather called Nigeria, before it was divided into regions and later called nigeria ...

I want to know what our symbol of unity was, before the green flags and solidarity songs ..

I know enough of the white mans view of my history, the repress and supress that he mildly called colonialism ...


Now I want to hear of before them, the dreams and aspirations my fathers had of now, their imaginations of the future ...

I want to be free but I dont want freedom ...
I want to be independent, but I dont want independence ...
Those words always make my liberty look like a privilege ...
Like a gift from the white mann ...

In all, I want to know this land, not in the view of the white mann ...
But in the view of the black man before he was called black ...

I want to know more about The territory they now call Nigeria before it was called Nigeria ...