Between the 1970s to 1980s, Fela Kuti was a menace to the Nigerian government. From his radical ideologies to his unconventional lifestyle and irreverent music, many would describe him today as bordering the line between genius and madness. With Kuti’s creation of Afrobeat—one of the most popular genres of music on the continent—it is hard not to find a little bit of Kuti in everyone. Musicians, especially Nigerian musicians, like to style themselves after Kuti, imitating his stage style, persona, dress sense, amongst other features. Even the ‘African Giant’ himself, Burna Boy, has sampled and modelled his way into becoming Kuti, not just in music but in the habit of condemning Nigerians for being docile in the face of oppression.  

Early Kuti music was mellower; funky love songs about disappointing lovers sung over upbeat brass instruments. It was music more for enjoyment than revolution. But in 1971, the language and tone were considerably different. After being involved with African Americans and observing wider Black liberation movements, Kuti discarded his love songs and became more cynical. He decried corruption, colonialism and police brutality. His songs about military rigidness, specifically the song ‘Zombie’ is documented to have led to the raid on his Kalakuta Republic residence that killed his mother—the formidable Funmilayo Ransome Kuti. He was also sentenced to a five-year jail term on trumped-up currency charges by a military tribunal during Muhammadu Buhari’s regime. 

Kuti’s politics was a mixed bag of Nkrumaism, pan-Africanism, socialism and other ‘isms’ with no clearly defined ideology or strategy to achieve his goals. On one hand, Kuti was a liberator who decried government brutality. On the other hand, according to John Darnton, a journalist at The New York Times: 

He ruled over the Kalakuta Republic with an iron hand, settling disputes by holding court and meting out sentences—cane lashings for men and a tin shed ‘jail’ for women in the backyard. Members of the commune treat him subserviently, holding his cigarette between puffs and quoting his lyrics like the Gospel. His women are treated little better than slaves. He wants to run for the presidency of Nigeria in 1979—and to some degree, these trappings of power account for his popularity among authority conscious Nigerians. 

A revolutionary leader running an authoritarian home is contradictory. At a time when women were denied basic freedoms like the right to vote, it is not out of place to consider that a powerful man who maintained a strict harem may have been exploiting women’s desperation for access to resources systematically withheld from them because of their gender.  

Kuti was sexist, he thought of women as beneath men, but he abhorred the colonial ideology of whites being superior to other races. This contradiction is also found in modern Nigerian celebrities and Afrobeats artists. Like Kuti, most celebrity activists today do not have clearly defined politics beyond songs and black squares on Instagram. In today’s world where people are crowned icons at 19 and celebrities are made in real time on the internet, the appeal of celebrity activism is even more. Public philanthropy is a marker of a person’s goodness and great optics are required to gain fans. 

In modern Nigerian society, being a revolutionary leader can also be lucrative. It can earn you fans, and by extension, money. Even the Nigerian government spent years paying millions in amnesty funds to broker peace with Niger Delta eco-activists, but continue putting the people in the region at economic and health risks. These rewards for revolutionaries have incentivized more people to embrace the celebrity activism route as a source of income.