Femi Kuti Exclusive: ‘I Don’t Believe In Marriage’

By Dimeji Ogedengbe

As Americans are still basking in the euphoria of the Broadway musical (Fela!), that chronicles the life and times of the Afro beat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti; his true friends – the common man on the street, the oppressed and cheated troop in and out of the New Afrika Shrine on a daily basis to celebrate another posthumous birthday of the man whose musical sermons and activism were about giving hope to the common Nigerian.

It’s a Thursday evening at the New Afrika Shrine in Lagos. Afro beat followers are gathering in their twos and threes. They are walking up and about like surveyors – lighting fresh cigarette sticks at quick intervals, while marijuana smoke is up in the air like an inferno scene is close by. They are all gearing up for the evening’s activities. Backstage is a staircase that leads to Femi Kuti’s sanctuary. We step further without fear, peeping at different pictures hanging on the walls – the World Music Award winner and two-time Grammy nominee poses with different great men and women in the portraits.

Cutting on Femi, he is in his chair, engrossed in a book while his saxophone sits comfortably on his laps. He doesn’t even notice the presence of a third party until a little later. ‘Somebody just gave me this book of my grandfather – it’s very interesting’ he says later.

Upon hitting ‘REC’ on the recorder, Mr Kuti opens up on the sorry state of Nigeria that Fela fought against; how it has degenerated, naming names and apportioning blames. He talks about his religious belief, his failed marriage and his women…

You fought the producers of FELA! (The Broadway Musical) to bring the show to Nigeria. Was it your battle with them that mandated them to bring it to Lagos?

I don’t want to pat myself on the back but we fought tirelessly to make them bring it to Lagos and I don’t want to say it wasn’t at the back of their mind initially. When I was invited I told them if it’s not brought to Lagos I won’t attend. I didn’t want to attend not because I thought it was not good, but I don’t think being on the Broadway will be their greatest achievement or impact and I believe the best place to host it is the new African Shrine. Why should the Broadway be better than the Agidingbi Street? Why should it be Broadway and not Ikeja. So as a patriotic citizen, I fought for it to be brought here and make African Shrine the greatest place on this planet and that’s my dream and my goal – to make the New African Shrine the most precious place.

Why do you think the producers were not considering bringing it here until you stepped in?

Money! You know it’s going to cost them a whole lot of money to bring that kind of show to Lagos. They have sponsors for taking it to England. They’ll need a multinational to back them because they’ll need to bring down the whole cast and the production crew down to Lagos. It’s not a money venture, the show is for free, and they’ll need to pay the cast and the production crew. The shrine cannot afford to invest in that now. It’s their duty to go look for who is going to sponsor it. Though, it’s going to take it a while here probably one year, I know it’s going to England in November. I hope it goes to Tokyo and all over the world. I think it’s a play everybody should watch but what I’m fighting for is to bring it to Lagos.

Before now, news was all over the place that Dbanj was auditioned for the show and all of a sudden we heard that he has been dropped, would you prefer him to play the Fela character?

I never knew him as an actor, but I don’t care who plays the role as long as the person plays the role properly. If the person doesn’t play it well, I won’t be hypocritical about it. I’m not for or against Dbanj playing the role. So if somebody gets the role over him, probably that person must be a proper actor. The guy that plays the role now plays it properly. You can’t be Fela, you can only act him. The show I watched in New York was an excellent show.

Critics say Fela’s Children are not taking care of his home; meanwhile other world Legends like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley’s homes have become tourist centres. Would it be true to say Fela’s children are just milking his name?

(Pauses) Critics say we don’t take care of Fela’s house? Its pepper body that is worrying them. Do they know the problem inside the Kuti family? Do you want me to start saying the problem of the family? How can you lambast what you don’t know? Just like a teaser, when somebody like me was criticizing my younger brother – Seun, they said I was envious. In fact, I could not even say anything; he’s the one living in this house. Should I go and beat them to clean the house? When I said that this is how the house should go, it was these same critics that said why am I interfering in the house? They can see the New African shrine, this place cost us over 100 million naira. Where did we get the money? My mother, my sister and I decided to use our money to build the New African Shrine. We could have bought cars; we could have travelled to Europe. My mother wanted to move out of this country, she would have done that. Do you find that the shrine does not look kept? Because Seun and others are minors, they have no control. So my sister had to battle some of them out of the place, including people criticizing me in the first place. So they can say what they like, these kinds of people are spoiling Nigeria. This shrine and felabration has been run free for ten years now. We’ve run at complete loss to keep Fela’s name, ideas, heritage and family principles alive and many people can testify to that.

One would expect the multinational companies and the rest to support Felabration. What’s wrong?

That’s what you should be saying; when monkeys are talking like baboons. They should be thinking why Fela’s name has not been preserved by the government. Why are the multinationals not supporting Fela that is on Broadway? Fela has become a house hold name in France; in England…oyinbos are asking how could a man compose this kind of song? That he’s a genius and all that. Now, when you get to our people, they start to talk about fetish things that are not significant to the development of a nation. Where is MTN, Glo, Zain? We have gone to all these people to support Felabration, they’ve all refused because they want to be ‘pally pally’ with the government.  And Fela is still anti-government; they cannot afford not to let the government renew their licenses because they are all government boys. With their coat and tie, with their black skin, they think they are white men. My sister had to be diplomatic but I can never be diplomatic because I will always speak my mind. Whether they support or not, Nigeria will still celebrate the life and times of Fela. Shina Peters, King Sunny Ade, Lagbaja, Weird MC, Dbanj, Nneka…they’ve all been here and they are still on the Felabration 2010 bill. Nigerian artistes are all trying because they all came here to perform free of charge. The shrine can’t afford to pay them. What they should have done is to make him a great man; but Fela has been a great man and will always be a great man. Whether they like it or not, most of them are still dancing to his tunes. If you look at the president’s history, didn’t he dance to his Fela’s music in his youth days? What of Obasanjo? Didn’t he dance or shake his head to his music at one time or the other. So, Fela’s fans will forever come to the African shrine to pay homage to the great man.

Looking at Nigeria at 50, do you think we should be celebrating?

Let’s look at it objectively; the Nigeria our fore-fathers fought for, in my days, education was free. They used to give us school uniforms, books free, when someone is sick, they go to the teaching hospital and they treat you free and give you drugs free. That was the Nigeria we knew. The tuition fee was 10 naira and everybody shouted; Fanta was 3kobo and later became 5kobo, the highest price of bread was 5 kobo. Then it was 2 dollars to one naira, you can take the dollar to any part of this world and they will change it for you. The naira was stronger than the dollar; it was fighting hand in hand with the pounds sterling. It was 250 naira at one time to travel to America; you could go to England without Visa because Nigeria is a member of the Commonwealth. That was the Nigeria we knew. Slowly our leaders destroyed it. So what is there to celebrate if we look at it very well? Now, it’s over 150 naira to a dollar, which means Nigeria needs to work 150 times harder than the American and 220 times than the British to earn a living. We are all going to die young. So, what’s there to celebrate? A country that failed to provide good electricity for her citizens. A government that can’t provide good education. The good education they can provide is 200 thousand Naira per term. That’s somebody’s salary for 2 to 3 years, so how many Nigerians can afford this? The police can never get good education for their children, so the police child who could probably become pilot, mathematician…will never get there. So, their fathers will always be an embarrassment begging on the road side because of bad government. We should be in tears because there’s nothing to celebrate. When we even got independent with American and Europe on our government forcing us to answer to the Queen and the American president and they kept us down till today. Independent means we are not dependent on anybody, can we even say we are independent? When you know all these history, and you understand that 500 years of slavery, 100 years of colonial intervention, you cannot but understand why we are still where we are today. Now, corruption and greed have been the backbone and foundation of this country since and after the civil war. Everybody wants to steal and acquire as much land as possible. It has become an individual asset, the schools are meant for the children of the VIP in Ikoyi and Victoria Island, the oil is no more for Nigeria, it belongs to the hierarchy of people in power and not Nigerians. The resources became which family will control government and that was how Nigeria was founded. We should be in tears on how we are going to get out of this predicament we found ourselves. How will the young man and woman prosper without being corrupt? Let’s look at our sports, take a look at the NFA. We cannot have three national teams easily, there’s a time we used to fill up stadiums to the brim. There was a time when we used to support the IICC, Rangers, Bendel insurance. But now we all look up to teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man United – where they have good roads, good rail transport, good electricity and good health care. We all dream of going to these places to enslave and discard ourselves. We are not proud of our teams any longer. So what are we celebrating? Only a fool can celebrate. We should be in deep thought on how to get ourselves out of this mess.

Are you saying the musicians campaigning for these policians for the 2011 poll are fools?

I’ll probably say that they are naive and don’t know history. If you call me to campaign for any politician, I will refuse. Now, which politician has challenged Obasanjo or Babangida or brought any government functionaries to book? Are they telling us all the past leaders were not corrupt? That we just arrived at this predicament by accident? If the bankers are so corrupt can you imagine how some of our politicians can be corrupt? Are they saying none of the past and present governors are corrupt enough to be in jail by this time? Why is it taking them so long to prosecute them? Why do they even give them bail? Who is going to answer all these and if nobody is ready to answer, so why do they jail the housemaid for stealing a thousand naira? Why do you accuse the Okada rider and execute a common man for committing an offence? When the big criminals go away with our millions? So if they call me to campaign for any politician, that person should have been a leader that would have put all this in check and I’ll be ready to die for his ideas. Like Kwame Nkrumah, Lumumba and Fela. I haven’t seen any of our leaders and if we go further, Obasanjo is President Goodluck’s godfather. From what we hear, he’s a PDP member; Is Goodluck is going to jail any PDP representative? I can’t believe that? It’s yet to be seen. May be when I see that, I’ll say Nigeria is changing for the better. You want to tell me Obasanjo’s eight-year failed tenure is not answerable to anyone? What happened to all the money budgeted to electricity in this country? We still don’t have electricity, who is going to pay the cost of all the money? Who is going to pay the cost of most of us that are born in the sixties and haven’t enjoyed in our country? Our lives have been wasted! So you cannot find me campaigning for any leader that cannot answer to the history of our nation.

One on One with IBB, what will you tell him?

It can never happen. I don’t even give it a thought. Where are we going to meet? He can never come the African Shrine and I can never go to his house in Minna. I don’t socialize stupidly, so we can never meet at any party that he’ll be there too. So, where are we going to jam? He’s part and parcel of the down fall of this country.

Come 2011, who will you vote for?

With all what I have said, you’re still asking me who will I vote for? Do you believe I can vote for the calibre of people we have playing politics today?

Not even Dele Momodu?

Dele Momodu hasn’t stepped on my toes but I wouldn’t vote for him. Do you believe he’s credible enough to be president of this country? If you look at Dele Momodu’s history, if I look at it tentatively, I will not even leave my house to vote for him. Why would you want to go and delve there? It’s like a mission impossible, let us face fact. What of the election rigging, you’ll see how many contestants that will end up in the court over election malpractices. Many of the military men took off their uniform and also contested because they don’t want to leave power.

Let’s talk about your women. Do you have a lot of them like Fela?

I have girlfriends. I don’t believe in marriage. I got married once and I knew I was wrong…

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