Fela Kuti dominated the African music scene with his larger-than-life-attitude and weird but very elegant costume.
The rhythm of his music was something out of this world blended with a lead sonorous voice, and backed with dulcet female voices.
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| Photo Credit : Ugo Jesse |
His lifestyle of often being in his briefs alone and smoking marijuana in live interviews on national television gave him away as unserious and reckless but all that were facades for the real Fela was a disciplinarian and very serious to the core.
With a professional degree in Classical Music from the Trinity College of Music, UK. He was among the most, educated, finest and fearless men Nigeria and indeed Africa had produced. He was a die-hard Pan-Africanist.
Nobody can replicate what Fela did in Nigeria of today. Most of our African musicians basically sing about sex, and vanity. You rarely see conscious artistes like Fela in this generation. It was during the military era with no recourse to the rule of law and the constitution yet, Fela stood out.
He saw the evil being perpetrated by the Hausa/Fulani against the whole Nigeria. Little wonder what he sang about decades ago is still manifest in the Nigeria of today.
Fela didn’t care whose ox was gored and didn’t base his antagonism on ethnic basis. That was why he hated Obasanjo and Abiola who are his tribesmen with passion. He stood for good governance, fundamental human rights, equal rights and justice, equity and fairness . He was a detribalized Nigerian.
Fela has a lot of musical albums to his credit. He was so prolific that he produced 49 studio albums and many more unleased before his journey to the great beyond.
Unlike our modern day Nigerian musicians, Fela sang about real life events; governance and politics in Nigeria and the world at large.
He was jailed several times by different military regimes. Her mother was killed by the Obasanjo/Yar’Adua Military Regime and his Kalakuta Republic worth a fortune was burnt down. In fact, he was persecuted because he was not afraid to tell Nigerian rulers how corrupt they were.
He even made a satire of Buhari’s War Against Indiscipline (WAI) when he said he had never in his life seen where a government would be saying, “My people are useless, my people are senseless, my people are indiscipline (sic)” but only in Nigeria. He further asked how animal like Buhari would teach us human rights. Babangida was not left out as he sang a song and said he killed Dele Giwa.
He sang about how Obasanjo handed over to the same old politicians who had milked the country dry to start where he (Obasanjo) stopped. He hated the army brutality and indiscriminate arrests of the police.
There is one thing about Fela’s songs that many people have actually not looked at. The same people Fela sang about four decades ago are still the people calling shots in our polity today.
The same corrupt people that ruled Nigeria before are now still being recycled. The same people who kept Nigeria in its present condition of an underdeveloped dungeon, those same few people who took turns in looting the treasury of our country are still there: Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo , Theophilus Y Danjuma, Mohammadu Buhari, Ibrahim B. Babangida, and others.
It will take a long time before Nigeria will recover from the bankruptcy these past leaders looted her into.
The sad thing is that none of these leaders had accepted the responsibility of the gross injustice they did to this country rather they engage in blame games.