'cos what are we really left with
our best moments had been robbed,
bargained for and mortgaged ages before
the sad good news of our conscious birth.
in Nigeria, ideas are not what we search for,
we have them in gross, cos we permit ourselves to dream
and enjoy the fruits of our ecstatic hard work
only in the comfort or our beds.
Crying out the notorious phrase "This will be great"
'cos from the moment we step our feet
out of our illusive heavens,
we face the daily reality again and unconsciously forget
about those abundant dreams, until we get back to our bed,
to begin another dream that will ease us of all the dailies
of our daily lives.
then we have just one ambition,
and that ambition is to pester our long gone distant cousin
about joining him in the quest for a greener life
than that of the Nigerian flag,
we compile the sweat of our hard earned money
and dream about the day we will leave...
our departure is not about leaving the country
but walking away from these troubles of our life,
hoping that dreams come true across the Niger
When you become a Nigerian in the diaspora
you are still allowed to dream.
'cos you don't have much you are left with
Some moments in life, everything stops working
as sudden as they started, leaving one in a complete stand still
you feel so lazily hard working and call yourself silly names like "Shit... Merde"
'cos nothing seems moving in the direction of your feet.
Then you've got just one ambition at this point
and that ambition is just to be where your heart is,
you dream of your return,
speak to yourself in loud voice,
in a very Nigerian way
words of self confidence in your hallucinatory 'home - coming"
you raise your personality high with two stars,
you brag about how you alone will turn the town up-side-down
and paint it all RED.
This is the sort of feeling that occupies my busy mind at times.
is it a dream? or an objective? or mere optimism?
Optimism itself, isn't it a dream,
the song playing in the mind of the oppressed is for sure "optimism"
and that's what we are left with,
for that is the only moment we are able to enjoy those things we miss
even if it is for a minute, we live that moment as robustly as we can
'cos we are sure of loosing that enjoyment in the next wind that blows on our sensibility.
Well i am allowed to be a dreamer. 'cos i am 101% NIGERIAN.
I don't know about other nations but i think there is a particular kind of dream that is very peculiar to nigerians, there is the issue of our aspiration that has been trampled upon by some few that makes us even dream of the very basics of life, like electricity and pipe borne water, you know the more tribulations you go through in life, it forms you, refines your sight and make you see just money in everything, money becomes the numero uno of our motivation, when poverty (not just financial) creeps upon you, you become vulnerable and anything goes, and in a situation where anything goes even your dreams go.
A very personal anger is that of my fellow Nigerian dancers, there was a time when guys were aiming big, thinking of projects and how to make things happen both internationally, nationally and locally, but there comes a little shift in recent times, where guys makes "nice cash" through salsa dance, "reality" tv shows, music clips and animating for oil companies and banks etc.
So "Success" in that definition can as well be another kind of dream killer, because when we had nothing we were quite young so we could do a lot of sacrifice but now guys are in serious need of meeting with daily expenses and responsibilities, so there is a huge rush for the daily bread and of course the money is coming but where are those dreams?
In Nigeria we trade dreams in exchange for anything, in which its popular demand is "material success"
in the Diaspora i wonder if we even dream again, cos we never have the time...
GUYS DEY HUSTLE FOR ABROAD.
