Femi Kuti
the most eldest son of Afrobeat pioneer and human rights activist Fela Kuti, inherited his father’s zeal for both music and activism.
He began playing the saxophone and keyboard with his father’s band when he was 16 and moved into the spotlight, writing and singing after his father joined his ancestors.
Till date, Femi remains politically inclined and still sings about political corruption all over the world, poverty and primitive living conditions suffered by Nigerians.
In this exclusive chat with media , Femi takes us through what he calls his late father’s hidden biggest mistake while he was alive.
‘My father channeled his energy into fighting corruption and injustice, but then, he made this great mistake as well. Everyone else was more important to him than his family. I would never put anybody before my family because nobody will do the same for me. My kids can’t go into any of your homes and you’ll answer them before your own children. For example, back then I’ll want to have a word with my dad but he’ll say ‘tell me what ever you want to say here’, right in front of anybody and everybody with him. Now, intelligence tells me today that back then a lot of the people around my father were SSS who always went back to tell the government his plans and what was going on in his family, so we were really out on the spot,’ he said.
He continued, ‘Then the SSS were always parked in front of our house, you’ll see a man parked early as 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. reading newspapers and watching our house all day. My mother used to be scared to the core back then because it was easy to hurt my father by hurting his kids, but I guess the government saw that he didn’t pay much attention to his children, so if they had hurt us, it wouldn’t have stopped him from doing and saying what he wanted, it would have fuelled his energy the more.’
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