Fela's Foresight

I have always wanted to write about Fela! Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. In the wake of this year’s “Felabration”, I found enough incentive so to do, even though politics and business disturbed my timeline. Why would an otherwise serious column dedicated to “Economy, Polity, Society” find Fela a worthwhile subject? The answer is that Fela transcended all of these spheres. Indeed my basic thesis is that Fela was ahead of his time and his generation in his pioneering thinking in relation to Nigeria’s socio-political development, and oftentimes in relation to global politics as well.

Consider Fela’s song, “Zombie”, a stinging rebuke of the Nigerian military institution and rejection of military rule which had turned Nigeria and many other African and third world nations into huge military garrisons. At this time when Fela found military incursion into civilian life and national leadership an abominable desecration, professors of law, political science and other intellectuals, lawyers and civil servants were happily serving under the military. It was not until the progressive (or rather regressive) march of military rule turned full circle with the Abachas that intellectual thought in our universities, professional associations and chambers of commerce evolved into a consciousness that military rule could no longer be tolerated-decades after Fela!

Or consider Fela’s “Authority Stealing” which was a frontal assault on corruption and the selfish abuse of office by Nigerian political office holders and civil servants. Fela recognised that “…authority stealing pass armed robbery” in its destruction of the national economy, denial of social services and infrastructure to millions of Nigerians and its ultimately deleterious impact on the nation and the destiny of its masses. As Fela argued while one armed robber could destroy one or two lives at a time, a pen robber by one stroke could destroy a million lives, denying them schools, hospitals, social welfare, power and other necessities of a fulfilled life. It took us several decades after Fela before corruption came unto the national agenda with the ICPC and EFCC.

Our people’s docility and lack of political activism also engaged Fela’s attention long before NGOs and so-called “civil society organisations” and at a time when the foreign ministries of the western powers thought the best way to protect their interests was through African strong men or their corrupt civilian counterparts. In “Suffering and Smiling”, Fela railed against the abject conditions of public transportation (“…49 sitting 99 standing…”) and other aspects of the standard of living of our people and wondered why they continued to smile and tolerate the wickedness of their rulers. But then Fela understood. As he sang, our people will do anything to stay alive, even if they were living an existence which was next to sub-human. “I no wan die, mama dey for house; papa dey for house; I wan build house; I wan buy car”, Fela sang, recognising the endless, sometimes unrealistic hope for a better tomorrow which push our people against radical political or social action to improve their conditions. Fela anticipated the peculiar bastardisation of “demo-crazy” that we would later see from 1999 to date. He regarded the mockery of democracy that we witnessed during the Shagari regime and the Babangida experiments as a demonstration of madness (craze).

Fela’s thinking also explored economics, international relations and even aspects of sociology. He sang for instance about inflation and its effects on the purchasing power and living standards of the people, illustrating with the story of the unfortunate Nigerian who was saving to buy some appliance, whose price kept moving up, as our victim manages to assemble enough funds to buy the coveted item. He sang about the menace of multinational corporations which encouraged corruption in third world countries using MKO Abiola’s ITT as the example. “International Thief Thief” he parodied. At this time the US and other developed nations had no problems with their corporations bribing and corrupting third world nations. It is significant that such activities as Fela sang about are now illegal under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and even private sector organisations from developed nations are obliged under laws such as Sarbannes-Oxly to adopt higher and more noble standards of conduct. Many years after Fela!

Fela sang about the United Nations, about the oddity of the veto wielded by the US, UK, China, Russia and France, wondering how united an assembly that harboured Britain and Argentina; Libya and the US; and Iran and Iraq could be. Fela of course dismissed the UN as a “disunited United Nations”! He sang about Africa as the “centre of the world” projecting the mantra later adopted by our foreign policy establishment as “Africa as the centre piece of our foreign policy”. Fela also sang about social phenomenon-the inferiority complex and neo-colonial mindset fostered by “colonial mentality”; about the penchant of ladies to do “shakara" when propositioned by men; the critical role of water in human existence in “water no get enemy” (today global NGOs are also on to that); about the desire of Africans to look fair-skinned (still that inferiority complex) in “yellow fever” and other social tensions in “palava”!

Fela was ahead of his time. Unfortunately as happens to geniuses who can’t understand why the environment around them can’t see what they see, Fela may have snapped and become a social, economic and political rebel. His ultimate vindication is that decades after his songs, we have finally found our way to accept all his arguments.