FREE SLAVES

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” ― Jim Morrison

Saw the movie "12 YEARS A SLAVE" recently and I couldn't help but shed a tear for the black race. The suffering, psychological trauma and hatred all because they were black. It’s so degrading a race felt it was a smart move to turn fellow humans into slaves, just because of difference in skin colour. The fight for freedom by great, brave, selfless black men gave birth to freedom.

Looking at present times, makes me wonder if the fight fought for freedom is really worth it. We had been made to believe they were far better than us. Why? Because they are whites! Duh.  This old belief has stuck with us and is being passed from one generation to the other. We now wander on the streets as free slaves. In our freedom we chose to embrace slavery willingly.

"Do the whites poop?" I asked my father one night, still a kid. "Do they eat?” he replied sarcastically. At that moment I began to wonder, what then the difference was.”Is it because they live in the skies?”My naive mind wondered again. "No! They do not live in the skies, they live on land like us, and the sky is just a means of transportation for everyone of us. Black or yellow or white or anything/anyone that can afford it “I later realized.

Why then have we allowed this free slavery? I pondered as I grew. We keep washing down ourselves and praising the whites. We believe everything they say, whether right or wrong. Even when our inner mind says it’s wrong, we make our head believe it is right, just because it is from the whites. We are so drunk in low self esteem; we don't trust ourselves to do the right thing anymore. We trust the whites over our own people. I hear that most of our planes are flown by whites; people trust them better than our indigenous pilots. We prefer goods from overseas over our locally made goods. Even as a kid I always cherished things gotten overseas over things bought here. It just seemed normal“It’s always better”I was made to believe. “O quality gan” mother would say. We have this everything-from-overseas-is-always-better mentality. Is this the freedom our forefathers fought for?

Our inner mind is in chains, it seeks freedom daily but we choose not to let go. We know the right thing, but we'd rather indulge in the wrong thing, so far it’s 'cool'. We have given up on us. I still remember the way we rejoiced when we heard the whites were going to #bringbackourgirls. We had our hopes high. But we all know the story now. I’m not trying to down wash the whites or anything. They are awesome trust me. But they didn’t get there in one day; it took a lot of hard and smart work to get there. We can get there too and be fully independent; but we have chosen to be parasites and copy cats. We have a lot of hospitals here, but our leaders would rather fly out for medical services than use the ones we have. One thing that baffles me is they don’t even mind if the doctor treating them is a Nigerian or not, so far he is overseas they are cool with it. Our land is blessed with so much green yet people still go overseas to find greener pastures because they don’t believe our land is green enough. We are blessed with so many good things, but we choose not to see them. We would rather be parasites. Remember "there can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” IT BEGINS WITH YOU.