Fela’s Republic and the #EndSARS Protests

No, this is not 2020—a year that has arguably been one of the most ideologically significant and politically turbulent in history. This is 1974 and the man in question, according to Benson Idonije’s Dis Fela Sef! The Legend(s) Untold: A Memoir, is Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His commune, known as Kalakuta Republic, has just been raided. Kalakuta Republic was named after the police cell in which Fela (as he was known) was detained at the Central Intelligence Division headquarters in Lagos.

Fela is put in a police lorry and detained at Alagbon Close, an obscure location in the interior of Ikoyi, Lagos, with more than 50 members of Kalakuta Republic, one of whom later recounts these events. The charges against them are eventually dropped for lack of substantial evidence. This would be the first of 199 arrests that Fela would experience in his lifetime. Fela would be subject to incessant police raids, detentions and brutality, which would end up shaping the politically charged nature of his music and activism for the rest of his life.

More than 40 years after Fela’s first arrest, young people in Nigeria have flocked to the streets with placards in their hands, fists clenched upwards, and fire in their lungs. Youth protests are not new in Nigeria, or to this generation of Nigerians. This time, however, the youth are protesting the brutality, torture, injustice and disregard for human rights the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) routinely exhibits. The SARS unit was set up in 1992 to tackle the problem of violent crime. However, it has become known for targeting young people, extorting money, torturing, abusing and even killing those who resist arrest. According to Amnesty International, there have been at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extra-judicial execution by SARS between January 2017 and May 2020 with none of these cases having been brought to justice. When it comes to police brutality and injustice in Nigeria, not much has changed since the time of Fela (who, coincidentally, was born on October 15, 1938!), and today’s young people have had enough.