It’s October 1st, again.

Independence Day always brings me back to small memories

The price of rice at Mama Oghomwen’s shop,

The songs and films that filled our streets.

But as the years pass, those memories clash with the present,

and I find myself asking: what has become of the green and white?

This memory comes in hues of brown,

kinder than our stained green and white.

It is a Wednesday afternoon in 2014.

I have just returned from school extra lessons

when my mother sends me to Mama Oghomwen’s shop.

Her price list is scripture:

a cup of rice fifty,

a cup of garri the same,

a cup of egusi forty.

An egg thirty.

Indomie super pack one-twenty.

Pure water one-twenty.

Pepsi seventy.

Digestive biscuit fifty.

Fuel eighty-seven a litre.

Superstar chewing gum ten naira.

That same year, the Chibok girls were stolen in the night.

Their faces filled our screens.

Their names filled our mouths.

Their absence filled our hearts.

And yet the same year,

Nollywood plots made us laugh.

Afrobeats moved our bodies.

Markets overflowed with off-shoulder tops,

the Ayra Star of the day.

And our hair—our natural hair—

we wore it like a rebirth,

like a crown returned.

Now, more than a decade later,

Mama Oghomwen’s prices mock us.

The poor can’t afford garri.

Petrol is luxury, even for the rich.

The Chibok girls

forgotten in hearts,

invisible on screens.

Our leaders busy themselves with irrelevance,

dropping meaningless bars like rappers chasing applause.

The uniformed man is fluent in the language of bribes

but stammers when asked for protection.

Beggars multiply,

begging from beggars.

And the blood of End SARS

still stains the Lekki Toll Gate

a monument of youth silenced,

a nation more broken than before.

The classrooms have become waiting rooms of despair.

Teachers carry hollow eyes.

Children sit in broken chairs,

their futures borrowed against debts they did not sign.

And minimum wage?

It limps behind the cost of living,

a number too small to feed a family,

too weak to buy dignity.

For those of us just becoming adults,

independence does not taste like freedom.

It tastes like calculation

rent against food, transport against survival

dreams postponed until further notice.

And now, at year sixty-five,

are we happier?

Sadder?

Angrier?

Bodies turn in their graves

because their land betrayed them.

At sixty-five,

is this the giant of Africa,

or the cripple limping on crutches of corruption?

So what does October first mean now?

A day to look longingly at the past,

or one to dread for the future?

Do we keep hoping

while bleeding sweat, tears, and red?

Yes, we want to celebrate beauty.

But do we silence the cries of her citizens?

Has the giant forgotten itself?

Did it lose its measurements at the seamstress’ table?

Does it still look in the mirror and smile,

or does it too see the stains

on its green and white?

Find me on Instagram: @anitaaadaeze

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