African Union:
African Union:
(The White Elephant of Addis Ababa)
What is in a name, what is in a word?
When the cry of the continent goes unheard.
In two thousand and two, the banners unfurled,
To birth a new giant to show to the world.
Out went the OAU, in came the AU,
But the paint on the structure is all that is new.
Fifty-five states in a grand, hollow room,
While the soil of the motherland suffocates in gloom.
A crippled white elephant built on a hill,
Where the ghosts of dependency linger there still.
Bound to the masters who ruled them before,
Failed governments knocking at Europe's back door.
The headquarters tower in Addis Ababa,
Promises spun like a rich, golden fabric.
Agenda Twenty-Six-Three on the slate,
A long-term framework to alter our fate.
An Executive Council to sit and debate,
While the masses outside just wither and wait.
They speak of a market, a single free trade,
But tell us, what goods have our nations yet made?
When business between us is broken and low,
And the winds of frustration and jealousy blow.
In the streets of the south Africa, where the hooligans rage,
Driving out brothers, a shameful, dark page.
Looting the shops of the African kin,
Where was the Union when blood washed the skin?
The Assembly of Kings, the supreme ruling head,
Convenes in their suits while the innocent bleed.
When Nigeria declared war on its own in the past,
And the children of Biafra breathed out their last,
Starving and broken by genocide's hand,
Where was the OAU to protect the land?
Today, the old waters still violently flood,
As Nigeria is drowning in innocent blood.
And when Arab militias rained death from the sky,
Making the sons of South Sudan die,
They boasted of "active, regional force,
"But the paperwork followed its sluggish, blind course.
They sit in their offices, checking the feed,
While the patriots rise up to answer the need.
When Traoré stood tall for his country’s own soul,
And Tinubu bullied to take back control,
The sell-out chick barked for the colonial crown,
To push the brave captain and country back down.
Enterprise networks and fellowships grow,
To help small businesses make a slight show.
But the grand economic foundations are bare,
No projects of substance are visible there.
Just wonderful ideas and visions so grand,
With no real development touching the sand.
A betrayed and ravaged African space,
Masking its wounds with a duplicate face.
A continental body of rhetoric and pride,
With a beautiful name, just but a hollow inside.
Remember Lumumba, whose vision they sold,
While foreign ambitions laid claim to our gold.
Remember Sankara, who stood for the poor,
Betrayed by the wolves at the African door.
Remember Gbagbo, pushed out of the scene,
When Western agendas disrupted the green.
And look back to Mandela, who weathered the storm,
While white-minority rule kept oppression the norm.
Yet history repeats on this fractured terrain,
As modern-day leaders ignore the deep pain.
What are they doing for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu?
A silence that hangs like a shroud o'er the AU.
Nations across the wide world have cried out,
At international kidnapping, shrouded in doubt.
Condemned on a law that was already repealed,
While justice is broken and truth is concealed.
Are they not seeing the hand of Simon Ekpa?
While blood stains the soil from Abuja to Jah.
The double-edged games and complicity breed,
Leaving the innocent public to bleed.
Where are the forces they boast of so loud?
The indomitable armies that look so proud?
They vanish like smoke when the crisis is near,
Leaving the continent frozen in fear.
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