By Gabriel Airewele
I grew up in Ikeja, within walking distance of Fela’s shrine. As a child, my daily routines took me through Pepple Street on my way to school in the Ikeja GRA area and later to choir practice at Archbishop Vining Memorial Church on Oba Akinjobi Way, almost beside my school. This proximity meant that Fela was never an abstract icon to me nor a distant celebrity encountered only through songs, documentaries, or second-hand stories as many young people now weighing into the Fela Wizkid controversy tend to rely on. Growing up, Fela was present and physical. I walked daily through streets shaped by him embodying his activism, music and lifestyle.
There is no dispute about Fela’s place in history. Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a musical genius whose creative vision gave birth to Afrobeat and permanently altered African music and political expression. He confronted military authority and deployed art as a tool of resistance, carving out a cultural identity that continues to resonate till today. The contemporary success of Nigerian music, now a powerful cultural and commercial export, draws in no small measure from the groundwork he laid. Artists like Wizkid operate within a global ecosystem that Fela helped make possible. To deny this would be deliberately dishonest.
In those days, on the top floor of the building that once housed Bata Shoes, a short distance from and adjacent to the Ikeja under-bridge, a disc jockey known as Mr. T played Fela’s music almost continuously, seemingly without regard for disturbance that might be caused by the noise. His speakers blared day and night, filling the surrounding streets with sound of Fela’s music. Ikeja appeared to embrace it, as there was no visible attempt to restrain him for noise pollution. I grew up imbibing and vibing to Fela’s music and message in that environment. Although my family’s home on Seriki Aro Street was at least one hundred and fifty metres from Mr. T’s music shop, the music from his shop often travelled clearly into our living quarters, punctuating family conversations and moments of quiet. We loved it. The sonority of the songs was comforting, and their presence became part of the texture of our everyday lives.
It was within this absorption of Fela’s musical genius and my acknowledgment of his artistic greatness that I was also confronted, from my early teenage years into my early twenties, with a deep and unsettling confusion created by the gap between Fela’s message and his actions. My first sense of this awareness came when I was about fifteen, through a schoolmate who had previously seemed timid and behaved ordinarily. One afternoon, on my way to choir rehearsals, he suddenly accosted me without provocation and struck me forcefully on my face, leaving me with a red eye. There had been no prior dispute and no exchange of words. We later learned that he had begun spending extended periods around the shrine and had taken to using marijuana, “Igbo” as we called it then, and which was openly traded and consumed in its vicinity. Years later, that same schoolmate would lose his life in a mob lynching incident, a fact that has continued to trouble my reflections on influence and consequence.
The shrine itself became a powerful magnet for young boys, and a few girls, who sought to live out the deviance that was preached and permitted within its orbit. For many, it served as a refuge and a safe haven. Young boys who took to pickpocketing, snatching bags or jewellery, or causing trouble in the neighbourhood often ran into the shrine for cover, confident that no one would dare pursue them there. I knew several who, emboldened by the acceptance they found within the walls of the shrine, dropped out of school and embraced life within it. In those days, to fear a shrine boy was considered a form of wisdom and to avoid them was seen as an early indication of a more stable future. Even now, I occasionally encounter some of the once-feared figures of Ikeja, now aged and diminished, their deep-set eyes suggesting lives that might have turned out differently had they chosen other paths instead of the easy lure of the shrine.
I once witnessed what can only be described as a war between rival factions of Fela’s shrine boys, staged openly in Ikeja. A horde of young men stormed Seriki Aro Street from Pepple Street, wielding machetes and smashing bottles, sending residents scattering indoors. We were told that Fela had demanded the capture of a local street boy who had fallen out of favour with him and was believed to be hiding on our street. In those days, such boys were commonly referred to as “omo-ita,” children of the streets, feared figures whose presence shaped how those who did not quite fit in learned caution early. From the balcony of our family home, and with a pounding heart, I watched the pandemonium unfold.
At the same time, Mr. T’s speakers were blaring one of Fela’s most recognisable songs, repeating the haunting line, “everybody run, run, run, everybody scatter, scatter………..,” as if soundtracking the chaos unfolding below. The music was not planned for the moment, yet it spoke uncannily to it, evoking fear, confusion, and approaching mayhem. In that instant, I felt an awakening of clarity. The artist was no longer merely describing disorder. He had become a creator of it, at least in that moment. In the wake of the small war, there was left Sorrow, Tears and Blood, the title of Fela’s song that Mr. T so fortuitously blared as the violence raged.
Much later, during my early years at the university studying law, I found myself reflecting on the case instituted by the Binitie family against Fela to recover possession of the property that housed the shrine. The property had been rented to Fela, but when the relationship deteriorated, he sought to pressure the family into selling it to him. What followed was a prolonged legal dispute during which the family struggled to regain possession of their own property. Substantive relief came only after Fela’s death, when the Court of Appeal eventually affirmed the Binitie family’s rights and ordered that the property be vacated. Reports have it that the dispute lasted about sixteen years.
For me, this outcome clarified a deeper contradiction between Fela’s public posture as a crusader for justice and the reality that justice in this matter emerged only after sustained resistance. The irony was hard to miss. The courts, an institutional arm of government he frequently criticised in his music, became the forum through which the dispute dragged on for so long, in a way that worked to his benefit.
It is fair to acknowledge that Fela was, in many respects, a crusader for justice. He fought against colonial mindsets, military dictatorship and elite hypocrisy, and much of that posture was justified. However, the contradiction lay in how power was exercised within his own immediate domain and against his fellow citizens.
It is against this backdrop of lived experience that comparisons between Fela and Wizkid have prompted my own reflection on what it truly means to be great. Wizkid is often framed as a beneficiary of Fela’s trailblazing and in a musical sense, that is true. Yet the comparison fails when greatness is measured beyond innovation or popularity. I am drawn to Wizkid because he does not posture as a moral prophet or ideological leader. His influence is cultural, economic and global but it does not demand allegiance to a lifestyle or worldview.
Wizkid’s impact on Nigerian society operates through the visibility of his music only. He represents global possibility without positioning himself as a gatekeeper of virtue or rebellion. Whatever criticisms one may have for modern pop culture, it is difficult to argue that Wizkid’s influence encourages the kind of behavioural deviance or moral surrender that surrounded Fela’s shrine. His art does not ask young people to abandon structure. It simply asks them to listen and enjoy the music.
This distinction matters because it raises a broader question. How should greatness be measured? Is it enough to be an activist and an inventor of a new art form, or must we also account for the social consequences of influence? Icons are often shielded from scrutiny by myth, their contradictions disregarded by admiration. Yet societies can only advance by examining their heroes, not by worshipping them blindly.
Fela remains a towering figure in African cultural history, and nothing written here diminishes his musical genius or political courage. But greatness, if it is to mean anything beyond legend, must confront moral contradiction. Walking through Pepple Street as a child taught me that influence is never neutral. It shapes lives, choices, and futures, sometimes in ways that admiration cannot undo.
Perhaps the question, then, is not who is greater, but what kind of greatness we should value. The real work lies in our willingness to engage in honest assessment.
Gabriel is a lawyer and the writer behind the Substack, Nigeria Matters.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
