Certainly Fela (just like the late Gani Fawehinmi!) if alive would have rejected any proposed state award given to him anyway. Certainly not from the Nigerian state getting enmeshed in deepening crisis of credibility by the hour. Certainly not with the perennial crisis of governance manifesting in serial revelations of “Authority Stealing” and shortages of “water, light and food”. As a matter of fact, Fela once banned his music being played on federal radio stations in protests against the brutality and oppression of the military sergeant majors who ruled (sorry ruined!) the Republic! Very few could be so singularity audacious in damning a perceived oppressive and exploitative state.
Our comradely demand is certainly not for an honor Fela never asked, honor he definitely loathed while alive. On the contrary, the demand to honour Fela is to test our collective claim to good governance, anti-corruption which Abami Eda gallantly fought against through his artistic patriotism and arts Pan Africanism. “Blessed are the dead, For they will; Never be suspected”, so declared BM Themba, the great South African poet. The late iconic musician courageously decried corruption and bad governance at a time it was not fashionable to do so. So Fela would never be suspected for indifference and silence at times that mattered. The burden is therefore on those of us living who still lay claim to good governance to work the great songs of the legend. And one bold step would be to honour a like mind. Honoring Fela posthumously puts to test our sincerity to build a new Nigeria. It is timely and commendable that the Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode unveiled a statue in memory of the iconic musician as part of the week long activities marking his 79th posthumous birthday and the 20th anniversary of his death. President Muhammed Buhari parades three themes; anti-corruption, national security and economic recovery.
Nobody had foreseen the current national mess like the late Anikulapo Kuti (The One Who Carries Death in his Quiver!) did. And nobody would be taken serious that refuses to recognize the great contributions of the legendary Fela to good governance. He was a working man who truly lived on his sweat in spite of fashionable sleaze combined with official military terror in Nigeria of 70s, 80s and 90s. Late Fela symbolized dignity of labour in a country in which few elite thrived on corruption and “authority stealing” and indeed captured the Nigerian state. Fela sang for change, change and change. Nigeria’s search for a desired change remains elusive until Fela’s works are officially recognized. He was truly a global actor in the great traditions of similar artists like South Africa’s Mariam Makeba, Huge Masakela and Senegal’s Yusuf Ndour among great other artists long recognized by their respective Countries.
Fela acted local (downtown Ikeja!) but his thoughts are global in that they resonate in Cape Town, Cairo, New York and London! Even today 20 years after his death Fela inspired hope for a strong united Nigeria and economic recovery. In 1974, at the time, it was not fashionable to patronize Africa and even more fashionable to ape Europe and America, Fela’s “Buy Africa” album rightly warned that prosperity would elude Africa without patronage of its products and ideas by Africans themselves. It was time for government to walk the patriotic songs of Fela through targeted budgetary spending to buy goods that must be produced at home in order to create sustainable jobs for the millions of youths.
Over 30 years after Fela did that song Nigeria and indeed Africa had uncritically enlisted in the World Trade Organization (WTO), a club of trading nations without products to sell but with multiple dumped products to buy. The result today is that Nigeria has become a huge market for dumped products from Europe and China leading to factory closures, unemployment and poverty true to Fela’s foresight and danceable warnings.
Fela’s Tears, Sorrow and Blood in the late 70s was seen then as danceable lyric which aptly summed up his tragic first-hand “treatment” in the hands of the military tormentors. Today we all saw that singular track as a powerful reminder of the legacy (regular trademark!) of military dictatorship. Yet it is far from being over. Just as Fela sang in that historic ode to dictatorship, his people (Nigerians!) are still in fear to fight for justice, freedom and liberty such that we were under the heels of majority thieving governors. Sorrow, Tears and Blood remain regular trade marks from the trails of armed and unarmed robberies to the official and street kidnappers. Follow-Follow is a classical warning against dependency and neo-colonialism. Fela urged that we open “sense, open eye and open brain” as we are susceptible to received wisdom. He observed that in the books of received wisdoms lie “termites, cockroaches and rats” as distinct from the promised sweet outcomes of the salesmen and women of received ideas. Today three decades after Fela’s prophetic warning, Nigeria is spell bound with received ideas from the books of Bretton Woods Institutions, namely IMF and World Bank. The theme of the 2006 UNDP Report was; Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and global water crisis. The Report I recall showed that water and access to water by majority of people is indispensable to any serious effort at meeting the millennium development goals (MDGs). Yet that was what Fela has pointed out in his evergreen “Water No Get Enemy”. The sad commentary is that in spite of the indispensability of water, it has “enemies” in Nigeria that include all of us who unacceptably rely on boreholes and rain fall to drink water. Precisely because Nigeria cannot make clean water available for its citizens or make its citizens ‘enemies’ of water contrary to Fela’s universally acclaimed insight that water “gets no get enemy,” is because we are yet to honour Fela by heeding his eternal messages.
Issa Aremu, mni
