Afrobeat superstar, Femi Kuti,\u00a0has stated that he feels irritated when people associate him with the late former President, Muhammadu Buhari.<\/p>\n
He stated this during an appearance on Arise Television while reacting to the posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award conferred on his father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.<\/p>\n
Story continues below advertisement\n<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Femi described the award as a global recognition of a life spent fearlessly confronting dictatorship, corruption and injustice in Nigeria and across Africa.<\/p>\n
He stated that everybody is excited about the development, adding that the honour carries deep emotional and historical significance, particularly for those who lived through the era of military rule that shaped Fela\u2019s music and activism.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is very happy. We\u2019re excited. I\u2019m in Los Angeles right now, and it\u2019s very hard to really explain, unless you were alive in the 1970s, what my father did, fighting dictatorship in Nigeria at that time. People were very frightened of the military,\u201d<\/em> Femi said.<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n He recalled the repeated state violence Fela endured and the toll it took on his family.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was raid after raid. The burning of Kalakuta. His mother being thrown out of the window, she later died from the injuries she sustained,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is so hard to explain to people today how frightening it was for his children at that time. We never knew when he would be arrested, or when he would be released. It was arrest after arrest.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement\n<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Femi said Fela\u2019s music cannot be separated from Nigeria\u2019s political history, noting how his father\u2019s sound evolved into a tool of resistance.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to understand how he developed his music over the years,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the 1960s, I remember his first hit, then Lady, Shakara. Then he went political. He confronted regime after regime, and then the burning of the house. So yes, Fela had a life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement\n<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Responding to questions about how Fela might have reacted to Nigeria\u2019s present-day political reality, Femi rejected attempts to associate himself or his family with political figures his father opposed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people say that somebody like me supported Buhari, that lie irritates me,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOr when people say I campaigned for Tinubu, those things hurt me as a person. As Fela\u2019s son, it is impossible for us to be part of any government that is not for the people, especially governments he opposed, people who beat him, arrested him or jailed him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement\n<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Femi said the Grammy recognition reflects decades of effort by the Kuti family and the global Afrobeat community to preserve Fela\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cMy elder sister, my brother Seun, my son Made, the rest of the family, we have all done our little bit to keep talking about him,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have musicians playing his music. You have people studying his music. You have Afrobeat artists today inspired by him. People are sampling his music.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement\n<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n He added, \u201cTo top it with one of the biggest awards in the world, the Grammys, what more can we want? But it\u2019s not for the family alone. Fela was a father to many people. That\u2019s why we say \u2018our father\u2019. He was a voice for the voiceless in the 1970s and 1980s.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Afrobeat superstar, Femi Kuti,\u00a0has stated that he feels irritated when people associate him with the late former President, Muhammadu Buhari. He stated this during an appearance on Arise Television while reacting to the posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award conferred on his father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Story continues below advertisement Femi described the award as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":240742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[2610,1900],"class_list":["post-240741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-fela-kuti","tag-femi-kuti"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2140320784femikutiB1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}