By Dr Alex Adum
In Windsor’s glittered halls they waltzed with borrowed grace,
Like puppeteers in borrowed skins, rehearsing power’s face.
They bowed as “historic guests” before a distant throne,
While back at home, their people starved in silence, all alone.
They spun like polished marionettes on strings of foreign praise,
Each step a well-rehearsed deceit, each smile a careful glaze.
“Emilokan!” still echoes faint beneath the velvet sound,
But hunger keeps a louder beat on Nigeria’s battered ground.
For while they danced through chandeliers and silver-plated light,
Borno burned beneath the weight of Amargadom’s dark night.
And poverty, a tireless thief, stripped dignity away,
While wages mocked survival in the harsh light of the day.
Minimum wage, a cruel joke, can’t fill a petrol tank,
Yet they returned with debts so vast the future itself went blank.
Eight hundred million pounds to hang like chains on fragile backs,
With outsourced jobs and contracts sealed in foreign, distant racks.
They pledged revival elsewhere, steel reborn in Britain’s flame,
While local hopes in Ajaokuta lay rusting still, forgotten in the game.
And sealed within their polished deals, a clause both cold and deep:
To take back souls the West rejects, its criminals to keep.
So round they waltzed, refined, composed, beneath imperial glare.
While home remained a wounded land still gasping for repair.
