Fela Reasons Why he Married 27 women in one day

I just heard someone comment in a
rather cordial conversation that Fela is
no hero to African values. He didn’t send
Femi to school and he married 27 women
in one day. And to this guy, who by the
way is a musician of the new school,
using the two reasons so stated, Fela is
no hero and cannot be pointed out to the
young to emulate as a role model.
To everyone that did not understand the
language Fela spoke with his actions, the
language of freedom and happiness, let
me make it clear. Nigeria has no socio-
cultural hero more prominent than Fela
Anikulapo Kuti. What Fela addressed,
bravely, with his life and family as
example, is education and morality. Fela
asked his generation two questions: What
is education and what is morality? The
answers he got were unsatisfactory to
him, so like every intelligent person, he
went out of the box for answers that
satisfied him.

Let me start with education. Traditional
African societies trained children, after
careful observation of their inclinations
during infancy, in what was referred to as
occupation, a skill that is life sustaining
and takes a period of tutelage to master.
The pupil had his own space to move
and grow, and the value of that
traditional education is evident in the
culture that our ancestors all left behind.
Modern schools lump everybody in one
box and brands them, like slaves, as
either good or bad. The bad are the F
students. The good are the A students.
This classification is artificial of course
and does not represent the true life
prospects of particular students.
Schooling is just a monster agent of
social chaos. Reality scorns the results
of schooling, since in life most
‘successful’ people were F students in
school and most ‘unsuccessful’ people
were A students at school. There is just
a small margin of equilibrium where the
system gets it right, but not because the
system is any good itself. Just because
things have to balance out in any case.
Fela recognised this stupidity of formal
schooling for what it is and decided to
try the way of his ancestors. He didn’t
abandon Femi. He trained Femi to play
music. And today, Femi, is one of the
most globally renowned musicians out of
Africa, without the contribution of the
University of Lagos.

Then Fela married 27 women at once. Of
course no married man today has had
sex outside his marriage 27 times. And
no unmarried man has had sex 27 times
with either prostitutes or their girlfriends.
Yeah, right. Let him who has no sin cast
the first stone. But what was morality, as
far as Fela was concerned? Well, for Fela
morality was blunt honesty and
sympathy, not hypocrisy and cruelty. He
didn’t have to marry any of those women
(he was already sleeping with them
anyway) but he did. He married them to
protect them from society’s scorn, a
scorn he already understood because he
has had to deal with it. For the women,
Fela took them from illegitimacy and
placed them under his name. People
normally hid behind their churches and
their mosques and indulge in secret
sexual affairs. But Fela is not normal
that way, just the same way he said he
was not a gentleman. Fela had his
affairs out in the open – and he made it
all legal too.

The problem we have with interpreting
Fela’s life as a role model is because he
was an alternative thinker – and we are
all idiots. At least you are more of that if
you still imagine that we cannot teach
Fela in Sunday schools.
There is a limit to the level of clarity with
which an alternative thinker would
choose to do a certain thing for it to
become meaningful to everybody. In a
world that now has more idiots than
people that are ready to use their own
brain people like Fela will always be
treated shabbily in church and chapel
conversations by people who are not
even fit to untie the laces of his shoes.
But that is the way of life. The guy I
argued with told me that St Paul is in
heaven and Fela is in hellfire. St Paul
told slaves never to aspire to freedom
since they would find it in heaven. Fela
told the slave master to go shove his
chains up his own you-know-what. I don’t
know how saints get chosen but if I am a
black man with a sensitivity towards
enslavement of blacks by whites,
especially in America in the 17 century,
I don’t know how St Paul is my hero and
Fela is my villain. It is just a force of
opinion that the same people who
accused our ancestors of worshipping
wood carvings will not allow me to
accuse them back of worshipping
wooden crosses. All of a sudden the
wooden crosses meant something more
than wood, but the wood carvings of the
agaba masquerade, by some reason,
cannot mean anything more than wood, it
cannot be a metaphor for a hidden
cosmology just like the cross. Just so
some idiot can vilify my ancestors in
peace.

Fela understood the world, like our
ancestors did, that we are soul spirits
just having another human experience.
Today we believe we are human beings
that can have spiritual experiences.
Fela was ready to live the wisdom he
imbibed, out in the opinion, something
Pastors Chris Oyakhilome and Chris
Okotie should do well to learn from. We
are all Christians but we have now
allowed our religion to wrap us in a
mystery of hypocrisy and double life.
Fela didn’t want anything to do with any
double life. That is why he married 27
women and if we have any brains left in
our heads we should know there is
wisdom here to teach our children, and
to teach ourselves.
God bless you. And bless that brother
that argued with me too. Heaven help us
all.
odega shawa

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