Postcolonial Songs – Wild Geese
The Flight of the Wild Geese
by Joan Armatrading
The song was released in 1978 as the opening theme of the star-studded action-packed blockbuster movie The Wild Geese. The song turns out prophetic for most of Africa, Nigeria most of all. Some words are added to the song’s lyrics to provide context.
Daniel Carney, an Okpike, who wrote the unpublished novel, The Wild Geese which the movie was based on, knew what he was talking about and was thoroughly honest about it. In the iconic movie dialogue between rescued President Julius Limbani and his mercenary minder Lt Pieter Coetzee, Carney is prophetic in his assessment of the future of Africa. It is a most satisfying and hopeful exchange, one anyone can believe in beyond the rhetoric.
Coetzee: We whites have been carrying you on our backs since we came to this country
Limbani: It’s the other way round isn’t it?
Coetzee: Is it? You need me to save your miserable black ass right now. Don’t you?
Limbani: I do. Then you may need me to save yours. We need each other white man and that’s the way it should be. We’ve got the whole world using us now. Setting group against group. Destroying Africa. Our new freedom is just another label for their brand of slavery and the final bloodbath is coming. First between black and white then black and black when you whites have left Africa for good.
Coetzee: Man we have built your countries, now you are kicking us out of all of them. You are living on foreign aid robbing your people blind, you are crying about outside oppression while you are killing each other in big great bleeding batches. When you have something better to offer you come talk to us on the white side.
Limbani: We both have something better to offer. Listen to me… If we have no future together white man we have no future. That’s what I believe in and that’s what I am willing to die for.
The shame is Nigerian leaders are willing to die for their greed, their ethnic manipulations, the bloodbaths they engender, and a keener dependence on usurious foreign aid. Nigerian leaders have no future nor are they willing to offer the nations they lead one. Nigeria has no future. Period. Futures are created by persons who are willing to die for its cause. For now Nigerians must be content with squandering of the present.
Lyrics of The Flight of the Wild Geese
Sad are the eyes [of Nigerians]
Yet no tears [blood not water]
The flight of the wild geese [imposed politicians that looked good at first]
Brings a new hope [to the happy ignorant]
Rescued from all this [Independence?]
Old friends [colonialists and neocolonialists]
And those newly found [half-leaders and autocolonialists]
What chance to make it last [when truth and justice starts to prevail?]
When there’s danger all around [the absence of all freedoms, opportunities, peace]
And reason just ups and disappears [dividends of tyranny]
Time is running out [they run the clock down and return to zero]
So much to be done [Nigeria is yet to start on the right track]
Tell me what more
What more
What more can we do [Talk, promises, sinecures, theft]
There were promises made [nothing else]
Plans firmly laid [failed governance, Big Thieves, uncompleted projects everywhere]
Now madness prevails [the rabid thefts, rising poverty and worsening senseless polarisation]
Lies fill the air [welcome to the post-truth era]
What more
What more
What more can we do [Talk, promises, sinecures, theft]
What chance to make it last [when truth and justice starts to prevail?]
What more
What more can we do [Talk, promises, sinecures, theft]
Be Good, not Lucky