Afrobeat Maestro, Femi Kuti, has lambasted the handlers of President Muhammadu Buhari for hiding the true condition of their boss’ health from Nigerians. He said that there was nothing wrong with the president being sick as he was human but that the problem was the ‘lies, pretence and deceit’.
He told Entertainer, “It is sad that our leaders cannot be honest with the nation. If the president is sick so what? Is it a sin to be sick? If he is sick you tell the nation he is sick and that is why there is a constitution and government. If he is sick, the vice president takes over. So, there is nothing wrong in it. What is wrong is lies, pretence and deceit and that is what happened during Yar Auda’s administration. The same people who criticized Yar Adua’s handlers are doing the same thing today. It is wrong to put the nation in suspense.”
The singer also recalled the ugly experience of witnessing the destruction of his late dad’s Kalakuta Republic forty years on.
“I was coming back from school when I saw soldiers going there (Kalakuta Republic). I turned back, told my mother what I saw. But by the time we returned, Kalakuta had been burnt down. I thought they had killed Fela. Women were raped and beaten mercilessly. My grandmother was thrown out from the first floor and she later died from injuries sustained.”
Femi Kuti also touched on his personal life, insisting that as much as he did not believe in marriage, he was glad that he experienced it.
“I have never believed in marriage. And I still don’t believe in it but I am happy I experienced it. I believe if I probably hadn’t married my wife we would still be together, and because of my upbringing, my wife and I are very close. I have a very open mind; I don’t let the marriage break-up get to me. And see what we took away from the marriage. We have a very handsome son who is doing us proud and if we did not meet we probably wouldn’t have had him. This overrides all the bad times we ever had. And we did have some good time. And I know why it did not work. When we got married we were young and then success just came from nowhere, and while I was becoming so successful, the same thing that happened to my father started happening to me,” he said.
