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Fela, Macron and Nigeria
– July 10, 2018
The man originally called Fela Ransome Kuti. To validate his cultural roots as an African original, he changed his name to Fela Anikulapo Kuti. But those who loved him and those who did not love him simply knew him as Fela. He had grown up through his liberation music and his "yabis" in the nemesis of scoundrels and a world icon for whom a second name was useless and a family name was a luxury. He lived an iconoclastic life, marrying 27 women in one day. It was debatable whether a man with such a replacement frame was able to do his husband's homework to all his 27 women regularly. He smoked Indian hemp in his club, even though he knew it was a banned product in Nigeria. When her mother, Funmilayo, an activist herself, probably died due to brutal manipulation by government authorities in the 1970s, Fela took away an empty coffin to Dodan Barracks, then the seat of the federal government , to donate to the Olusegun Obasanjo government. The donation was rejected.
In her later years as a musician, Fela wore nothing on stage except her skimpy underwear. No Nigerian musician before him had dared to go out in public with something close to Adam's birthday suit. Now, actresses and musicians are showing off their underwear and their bad. When social media activists challenged singer Tiwa Savage, for exposing her bad little by little in her shredded shorts, she retorted, "You have not seen anything yet." My comment: "pretty girl, show us more."
His home Kalakuta Republic and most people thought that it was clbady. But the military junta of Obasanjo did not think so. In February 1977, this government did the unthinkable: it burned the Kalakuta Republic of Fela and then they tried to kill the story. Yakubu Mohammed, a man of average size, has the huge heart of a professional reporter. As deputy editor of the New Nigerian in Lagos, he was on duty on that fateful day of February 1977, when the history of the Kalakuta Republic fire broke out. He sent his journalists and photographers to cover the story. Later that day, he received a call from Dodan Barracks ordering him not to publish what had happened at Fela's. Yakubu told the voice on the other end of the phone that he was not taking instructions from Dodan Barracks. He called the New Nigerian (NN) General Manager in Kaduna, Mr. Turi Muhammadu, to report what happened. Muhammadu told him to write the report himself without any sensationalism and to have it published. At 7 pm, an official from the National Security Organization (NSO) arrived at the Yakubu office to tell him that the government was going to issue a statement about it, so he should not post anything on it. Yakubu told him that he would issue the government statement with the report of the incident. Most newspapers have been deflated but New Nigeria, a newspaper belonging to the federal government, has published the story. The government finally declared that the Kalakuta Republic had been burned by an "unknown soldier". For the various governments of Nigeria, Fela was a persona non grata, an outcast, an untouchable rebel, whom one could only touch with the iron fist. It is the man that the President of France, a great world power, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, honored with his estimated presence at the new Afrika Sanctuary, owned by Fela's son, Femi, also a renowned musician. Mr. Macron was sitting at the Sanctuary listening to Nigeria's greatest musicians sing their songs in the morning ears.
What Mr. Macron said about African culture, youth and the need to involve them in the production of the future Their dream is important, but being there at the Sanctuary was even more important. I do not know of any Nigerian president who has ever identified with Fela despite his worldwide acclaim. For those who saw Fela as a rebel who needed to be disciplined and destroyed, Macron's visit to the Sanctuary is an inconsolable hit in the heart. He tore up the rulebook. Femi and Seun did well to keep their father's legacy alive. From the fame of their father, they have received the gift of derived dignity and, together with their own efforts, both have acquired a fundamental meaning. For the Fela family, what happened with Macron's visit is a pleasant revanchism. Fela's opponents will continue to rub their eyes in disbelief.
The people who fought Fela had a stiff, humorless military mentality. A military general told me several years ago that it was an insult for Fela to call his home the Kalakuta Republic. "You can not have a republic in a republic," he said. I told him, "In this case, you have to close all the restaurants that call Chicken Republic." He had no answer to that. Similarly, when I was president of the Association of Newspaper Owners of Nigeria (NPAN), I had gone to Aso Villa to request an appointment at the badociation to meet the President Obasanjo. When I introduced myself as the president of NPAN, the man, a retired major general, who was the chief of staff, said, "President with a small p." I could not I do not laugh, I did not laugh, I did not want to laugh because it could keep us from seeing the president. My anger and my laughter remained in my stomach despite the provocation of this authoritarian potentate. This state of military spirit has survived to this day. On the other day, Defense Minister Mansour Dan Ali, a retired army officer, said anti-grazing laws promulgated in some states of the federation should be suspended. This is clearly abnormal in a democracy but it is legitimate in a dictatorship. Once the coup succeeds, the Constitution is suspended. the courts have their hands tied behind their backs; parliament does not even have the chance to bow down. It is sent to the gallows. All the rest is suspended: equity, equity, justice. Only the military justice stands on its feet, right like a flag. This military mentality persists to this day
However, several years ago, a night club owner, Mr. Ken Olumese, owner of Niteshift Coliseum, was able to bring OMK chief Abiola and Mr. Babagana Kingibe, presidential and vice presidential candidates. the Social Democratic Party at its nightclub in Ikeja. In fact, the Vice President, Mr. Atiku Abubakar, also appeared during an interactive session titled Grand House Reception. To top it off, Mr. Olumese managed to convince MJ. Rawlings, former president of Ghana, at an evening of entertainment and badessment. Before being closed after 25 years of activity, Mr. Olumese had turned the club into a iconic place of infotainment, where the aficiona had an appointment with many movers in a feast of information sharing. In the context of Nigeria, it was unusual. Macron's visit to the Sanctuary was also the next.
Macron surprised us a little more. He awarded the highest French award to a Nigerian businessman, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr, founder of the telecommunications company Globacom. It was in recognition of what the man, affectionately called The Guru, did in the world of world affairs, including a number of English and French speaking countries in Africa. A few years ago, President Goodluck Jonathan presented Dr. Adenuga and Mr. Aliko Dangote, Nigeria's second-highest honor. In Nigeria, only MKO Abiola, non-president, received the country's highest honor apart from presidents or state leaders. The reason is essentially that the honors, especially the highest ones, are given here for official positions and not necessarily for achievements. Why would people like Dr. Adenuga, Mr. Aliko Dangote, Mr. Tony Elumelu, Mr. Jim Ovia and Professor Wole Soyinka proudly wear the country's highest honor? Each of them contributed as much, if not more, than some of the heads of government, living or dead, to the affairs of Nigeria. Mr. Dangote has built cement plants in several states of Nigeria and Africa, paved roads that governments have not been able to tarmac and is currently building a mega refinery. His philanthropy is phenomenal. Elumelu, as chief executive, and now president of United Bank for Africa, has developed the bank's branch network astronomically in Africa. Through his Tony Elumelu Foundation, he has empowered thousands of young entrepreneurs on the continent. When Macron came to visit, Mr. Elumelu brought them together for a conversation with the French leader. Mr. Ovia, a consummate banker and educator has a large network of financial institutions with the original brand of Zenith. He now has a world clbad high school called James Hope College in Agbor, Delta State. This school, which includes both expatriate and Nigerian staff, has state-of-the-art equipment and technological processes. But it does not cost an arm and a leg to send children there because education there is substantially subsidized. The founder calls it "affordable excellence". In a Newswatch article on July 6, 2004, I described Professor Wole Soyinka as "the conscience of our community and the lion of our earth." Without him, Nigeria would probably have broken into pieces. while the mafia prevented Dr. Jonathan from acting as president when President Umaru Yar & Adua was seriously ill a few years ago. Soyinka led a group of people on a protest mission to the National Assembly under the banner "Enough, that's enough". This demonstration produced the doctrine of necessity, which allowed Jonathan to return to work and roll back Nigeria. Soyinka received a national honor in 1986 after the Nobel Committee recognized her as the Laurette Nobel of Literature. So, now that Macron has shown us that even a Nigerian can get France's highest honor, why can not Nigeria give its highest honor to Nigerians who have pleased Nigerians and its overall image like those that I mentioned? above? Why?
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