No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men – Thomas Carlyle
October is a special month in the country’s musical calendar. This is because it is the birth month of one of Africa’s and undoubtedly Nigeria’s greatest musical export, the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
Since the programme was conceived in 1998 by Yeni, the maverick musician’s eldest child, it has held every year and has grown from strength to strength. In fact, it has become the greatest musical event in the Nigerian musical calendar and has made many to look forward to it. What is left is for the enabling environment to be created to make it become what the country can be proud of and plan to make bigger to attract tourists, scholars and other interested parties to make it bigger and more exciting and contribute to the new picture of Nigeria.
It is not a little feat for a programme that is just clocking about two decades to have the nexus of stars that have performed during its celebration. The list includes such great names as the late Hugh Masekela, the late Lucky Dube, Awilo, Baba Maal, Les Nubians, Saunti Sol, Rita Marley (wife of the late legendary Bob Marley); and from the home front have been legendary King Sunny Ade, the masked one Lagbaja, Asa, TuFace, and the legend’s two sons Femi and Seun.
This year’s Felabration, which was to mark the legend’s 80th posthumous birthday, has come and gone, but the fact that it has continued to grow bigger cannot be denied. Fela has become an idea and a movement that cannot fizzle out because the man who signified and propounded it is no more. The way it is growing has lent credence to that old saying that you cannot kill an idea. As the celebration matures, one believes it would continue to get better and better organised.
This year, one of the side events of the celebration was the presentation of a booklet by the former Chairman of the Lagos Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). The booklet titled FELA Yesterday’s Message As Today’s Reality, is a candid story of the writer’s encounter with the music legend and how the lyrics of the music served as a tonic to steel the will of Arogundade’s generation against the tyrannical military regime of the time.
Relating how he ‘encountered’ Fela through his music in his uncle’s radio repair shop in Ijebu-Jesa, he writes about how his music appealed to him because of his message and crusade. This was to later form part of Arogundade’s life as a student union leader and unionist who led the country’s most vibrant branch of the journalists union during the country’s most trying times under the most brutal military regime of the late Gen Sani Abacha.
There is also the interesting story of how he was to enter into a plea of mitigation on behalf of the Nigerian students for Fela who was standing trial for alleged currency trafficking by the then military government. He was chosen for the task by the late lawyer of the maverick musician, Kanmi Ishola-Osobu, and Femi Falana. By virtue of his leadership of the Nigerian students, he was to enter the plea. However, on the fateful day he was prevented from entering the arena of the trial by a detachment of armed security men. All pleas and gambits by the two lawyers failed to yield any favour. The claim by Osobu that he was a law student of the University of Lagos, which was initially devised to ease his access, failed because he was not a law student, neither was he studying at UNILAG!
Arogundade has with this booklet added to the ever growing narratives about Abami Eda. This is a welcome addition to the early one by Carlos Moore (This Bitch of a Life), Kayode Mabinuori Idowu (Why Blackman Carry Shit), Benson Idonije (Dis Fela Sef) and the intellectual bent of Sola Olorunyomi (Fela and The Imagined Continent).
It is elevating that we are beginning to tell the stories of our people and contributing to the corpus of knowledge about them. There are still other artistes that are crying to be documented for the general public to know more about them and get the feel of their artistry. The Fela narrative is still unfolding and more needs to be done by our own people and journalists who covered him extensively need to get down and do more detailed account of his life than what we now have.
In doing this, Fela is not alone; who is going to do that of Jim Lawson, Zeal Onyia, Victor Olaiya, Dan Maraya Jos and a host of others? We should not allow these legends’ stories to remain untold or be told by foreigners.