Fẹlá Aníkúlápò-Kutì used to be called an àbàmì ẹ̀dá by millions of people in his lifetime. These included the tens, if not hundreds of thousands who walked through the doors of the Afrika Shrine which he presided over as a self-styled Black President at some time or the other. Or the many who were lifted in spirit by the inimitable Afrobeat he played in concerts across the world.
Àbàmì ẹ̀dá in English could mean a weird or mysterious being. In Fẹlá’s case it would be more apt to see it as the latter: a mysterious being, in a similar vein to Peter Tosh’s “Mystic Man” who was “a man of the past, living in the present”, and ever “walking in the future.”
He was both an icon and an iconoclastic figure who both upheld traditions and attacked institutionalised beliefs and structures. And he did this, within the rhythms of the politics of his music and the music of his politics, even beyond his death. Not surprisingly, in life and in death, he has not only been laurelled. He has also been at the heart of controversy, including some that are simply put: babanla nonsense.
There have been several books written about Fẹlá worth reading. These include Carlos Moore’s Fela: This Bitch of a Life (1982); Michael Veal’s Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (2000), Sola Mike Olorunyomi’s Afrobeat! Fela and the Imagined Continent (2003) and the graphic Fela: Music Is the Weapon book by Jibola Fagbamiye and Conor McCreery last year.
The icing on the cake of recognition of Fẹlá’s music came on 31 January 2026. He made history as the first African to be presented with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for “creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance.” This follows the induction of his 1977 Zombie album into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2025.
On the eve of this award, a feud ensured between Seun Kuti, the revolutionary musician and son of Fẹlá and Wizkid, a prolific platinum award-winning singer. In the midst of this, Wizkid stirred controversy when he retorted to Seun saying, “I am bigger than your father.”
A lot of gbas gbos arising from this rather ludicrous claim set Nigerian social media spaces ablaze for weeks. The aim of this article is not to join the fray or revisit the merits and demerits of this. There are deeper issues involved which speak to continuities and ruptures between the era Fẹlá lived in and today’s world, at several levels which include the socio-technological, ideological, and political.
An interesting element of that period of heated debate in January is, however, the grace with which the Kuti family responded to Wizkid. Femi Kuti said, “Wizkid is like (a) family to me”. And he added that Wizkid would always honour Felabration “except if he is not in the country.”
The matriarch of the Kuti family, Yeni Kuti (YK Power) even described Wizkid as “my small friend” adding that “I love Wizkid a lot”. But expressing her concern at the attack on Fẹlá as “an icon”, she pointed out that you will not see “Bob Marley people disrespecting him”.
This took my mind to an earlier debate which Fẹlá was at the heart of, in flesh and blood, and with a wholly different kind of meaningfulness in its vibes, even though Fẹlá got worsted in it.
Fẹlá vs. Marley: a different kind of debate
In May 1990, Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe interviewed Fẹlá for the Weekend Concord. Fẹlá lambasted Bob Marley, who had died nine years earlier. But, quite instructively, this was not a “my Mercedes is bigger than yours” childish outburst. On the contrary, Fẹlá expressed respect for Bob, even whilst he criticised some of Marley’s politics and ideas.
In Fẹlá’s view, reggae generally and Bob Marley’s music in particular enabled people to look up to an afterlife Zion whilst suffering and smiling today, even though the music might make the suffering more tolerable because of its militant content. He also described Bob’s “One Love” as promoting a pacifist acceptance of the status quo.
It is instructive that Fẹlá had a soft spot for Peter Tosh, despite being a reggae great as well, seeing Tosh as someone who was committed to fighting in the here and now. But generally Fẹlá mocked the idea of fighting Babylon, which he saw as a prison in the sky, instead of calling out and fighting the oppressors we can see and name.
In the interview, Fẹlá further described Rastafarianism as merely an inversion of the same Judeo-Christian Western ethos of religion. Worse still, Haile Sellasie whom Rastafarians saw (and still see) as the living God, as Fẹlá pointed out, had been a dictatorial ruler in Ethiopia.
The response to Fẹlá was an immediate avalanche of op-eds and letters to the editors of the Weekend Concord, and several other newspapers. In fact, these ran into several pages for several weeks in Weekend Concord. Most of these challenged Fẹlá’s views on Bob Marley, without throwing away that bath water with the baby of Fẹlá’s historical and political significance.
Going into the nitty-gritty of that debate is also not the intent of this article. The contradictions in Fẹlá’s politics and ideas were obvious enough to see.
Bob Marley’s music did more than stir philosophical awareness. It also fanned the embers of resistance in many a young revolutionary and would-be-revolutionary’s minds on campuses and in working-class communities.
It was also ironic that Fẹlá, who himself stood for “Blackism – A Force of the Mind,” to attempt to reduce Bob Marley’s music or reggae music to being simply a force of the mind, so to speak.
Clearing road for the current jaga jágá
The 1989 debate had meaningful substance despite some clear drawbacks in Fẹlá’s perspective. Personally, it took place at a time I was questioning my alignment with the Rastafarian faith. Years earlier, Rasta Byron “Slow”, a Ghanaian shoemaker at the Iyana-Ipaja garage who was also a wizard with the bass guitar had won me to Rastafarianism while I was doing my A-levels. But, I had also become active in the Marxist movement at the University by 1988.
Being both Rasta and Marxist was a challenging contradiction on so many levels. It however took another year after the interview before I abandoned Rastafarianism as a faith, whilst still being passionate about reggae.
Beyond what Fẹlá said and the angered response to this, it is instructive that the quality of engagement on the pages of Weekend Concord was also impressive.
There is a world of difference between the debate that was, thirty-six years again and the babanla nonsense apology of a “debate” ignited in January. Amongst other things, this reflects the changed times we live in, which go beyond the place of Fela as “a singular cultural icon”.
Sean Jacob’s “Fela and the Nigerian Left” probably best situates one of the two legs of the gap we must mind to understand how far the train of meaning has left the harbour of music shaped by the politics and ideas of a liberatory movement. As he points out, Fẹlá’s “political career unfolded when a distinctly Nigerian left – rooted in universities, trade unions and parts of the state – was at its intellectual and institutional height”.
Whilst Fẹlá’s “relationship with others on the Nigeria left was contentions, and disagreement were often sharp”, that context enriched a spirit that anchored music on the palpable sense of a cause, a commitment to something more than just himself. This is something one struggles to find in today’s generation of activist musicians in Nigeria.
The other leg is the power – creative and destructive – of the sociotechnological development in several ways.
It enables a vocalist like Wizkid to generate music and reach a broad audience, with monies rolling in to the extent that he does not see the irony in declaring himself bigger than the multi-instrumentalist virtuoso and maestro that Fẹlá was, for any reason whatsoever. It also allows for the instant “anyhowism” of social media yabis.
Irrespective of the jaga jágá nature of the times we live in though, Fela’s musical, cultural and political contributions, warts and all, remain indelible.
by Bàbá AYÉ