Afrobeat superstar Femi Kuti has said he feels irritated when people link him to 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.
Femi described the award as a global recognition of a life spent fearlessly confronting dictatorship, corruption and injustice in Nigeria and across Africa.
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’s music and activism.
“Everybody is very happy. We’re excited. I’m in Los Angeles right now, and it’s 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,” Femi said.
He recalled the repeated state violence Fela endured and the toll it took on his family.
“It was raid after raid. The burning of Kalakuta. His mother being thrown out of the window, she later died from the injuries she sustained,” he said.
“It 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.”
Femi said Fela’s music cannot be separated from Nigeria’s political history, noting how his father’s sound evolved into a tool of resistance.
“You have to understand how he developed his music over the years,” he said.
“From 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.”
Responding to questions about how Fela might have reacted to Nigeria’s present-day political reality, Femi rejected attempts to associate himself or his family with political figures his father opposed.
“When people say that somebody like me supported Buhari, that lie irritates me,” he said.
“Or when people say I campaigned for Tinubu, those things hurt me as a person. As Fela’s 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.”
Femi said the Grammy recognition reflects decades of effort by the Kuti family and the global Afrobeat community to preserve Fela’s legacy.
“My 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,” he said.
“You have musicians playing his music. You have people studying his music. You have Afrobeat artists today inspired by him. People are sampling his music.”
He added, “To top it with one of the biggest awards in the world, the Grammys, what more can we want? But it’s not for the family alone. Fela was a father to many people. That’s why we say ‘our father’. He was a voice for the voiceless in the 1970s and 1980s.”
