TheCable

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti cried in Unknown Soldier:

Dem throw my mama

Out of from window

Dem kill my mama (x5)…

But Chief O.O. Davies, an ally of Abami Eda now the Baale Oju-oluwa (the Tani-Toluwa I) has revealed to TheCable that Fela exaggerated the action meted out to Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas Ransome-Kuti, his mother, in the hands of unknown soldiers.

On February 18, 1977, about 1,000 Nigerian soldiers attacked Fela’s Kalakuta Republic.

They burnt down the house, beating Fela and everybody in the compound.

Fela and some of the inmates of Kalakuta were hospitalised and later locked up in jail for 27 days.

His mother was among those brutalised that day but, Davies has now said the popular account on the incident, especially what happened to the first woman to drive a motor car in Nigeria, is false.

Then a General Service Officer (GSO) I in the Nigerian army, Davies is among a select few who could gatecrash Fela’s shows without parting with a dime.

He even had a special nickname, Expresser Bongos, which the King of Afrobeat, called him.

He was full of expression when the incident of February 18 cropped up.

“Fela said his mum was thrown from the window of the one-storeyed building; but it’s not true. She was not thrown,” Davies, who was Fela’s junior at Abeokuta Grammar School, said.

“He just wanted to whip up sentiments and use it to win the case against the government. If she was thrown, she would have died on the spot. Mama was old.

“I wasn’t there but my fellow soldiers gave me a lowdown of the incident,” he said.

“Mama was carried outside by the soldiers. She was lifted from the building and taken across the road.”

The chief’s account goes contrary to what is found in well-acclaimed books on the life and times of Abami Eda.

In Fela: This Bitch of a Life (page 151), Carlos Moore quotes Fela verbatim:

“Then, they grabbed my mother. And you know what they did to this 77-year-old woman, man? They threw her out the window of the first floor.”

In Fela: The Life & Times of an African Musical Icon (pages 155 and 161), Michael Veal wrote:

“His mother – then 78 years old – suffered a broken hip when she was thrown through a window…

“Fela’s mother died in April, having never fully recovered from injuries she sustained in the Kalakuta attack.”

In Arrest The Music! Fela & his Rebel Art and Politics (page 3), Tejumola Olaniyan wrote that:

“Fela’s ailing mother, Nigeria’s foremost anti-colonial nationalist and feminist, was tossed from a second-floor window.”

Lastly, Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway, a book edited by Trevor Schoonmaker, pages 107 and 119, reported that:

“Fela’s 78-year old mother, the pioneering activist Funmilayo, was thrown from a window. She died shortly after from the injuries.

“Accounts of her experience vary, but the one that gained currency was that a soldier had thrown her out of an upper-story window. A little over a year later, she died, on April 13, 1978.”

Away from books, TheCable sought the views of two people who knew Fela and were around during the incident Fela referred to as “the saddest day of my life”.

Duro Ikujenyo, a member of Fela’s Young Africa Pioneers (YAP) and later a band member, didn’t give much away.

“Well, I can’t really say whether it happened or not, but I remember seeing mama sitting on the ground across the road opposite the house,” the musician, who just released a new album, Pe Osun, said.

“The next day, though, mama had bandage on her leg.”

For Lemi Ghariogwu, mum’s the word on what happened to Fela’s mum 37 years ago.

“Victor, jo ma ko igbo si mi la po,” the artist whose imprint is on almost all Fela’s albums says, meaning he wants to avoid leaving his words on black-and-white.

“It’s not what I want to discuss,” he said.

But discuss we must!

Let’s have your view on the issue, especially from people who witnessed the ‘War on Kalakuta’.

And like Fela’s last words in Unknown Soldier, the track dedicated to the incident, let’s make it an ‘unfinished matter’!

Note: This is our first installment of news and articles on Fela Anikulapo-Kuti  to commemorate this year’s edition of Felabration, which will run from October 12 to 19.