65 Years On, Fela’s Music Still Resonates Across Nigeria’s Political and Cultural Landscape

There are certain expectations for a child as they begin to grow. At first, it is enough to take their first steps, to find their voice, and to discover the world around them. But as the years gather, expectations multiply. A teenager is urged to dream; a young adult is pressed to build; and by the time one reaches their sixties, the world assumes a certain wisdom, stability, and fullness of life has taken root.

 

If Nigeria were a person, born in 1960, then at 65, it would be an elder, a custodian of stories, and a witness to history. I imagine such a person to be old enough to have grey hair softening their head, old enough to have watched the country stumble from optimism to disillusionment, from coups to democracy. They would have danced to highlife at weddings in the ’70s and watched Afrobeats conquer global stages in the 2010s. They would carry scars from the Biafran War and memories of leaders promising new beginnings that never ended. They would have seen it all.

 

But what would such a person make of another independence celebration? As Nigeria marked its 65th Independence Day, although the celebration was subdued, the streets were once again draped in green and white in certain places. Politicians made speeches, flags fluttered, and schoolchildren marched with the same precision their parents once did. Yet, if people measured independence by the fulfilment of post-colonial promises, if it meant governance serving the governed rather than enriching the governing elite, by these standards, how free are Nigerians really? The question is not whether Nigeria is independent from colonial rule that happened in 1960. The question is whether Nigerians have achieved the economic liberation and social justice that independence was supposed to deliver.

 

These concerns are uncomfortable, but they are not new. They have been raised before, by voices — think activists, musicians, critics — that refused to be silenced by the yearly festivities of independence celebrations or the promises of fresh beginnings. Chief among them was the late Nigerian pioneer and principal innovator of the Afrobeat music genre, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, an artist who understood that true independence had to be earned in the everyday struggles of ordinary people.

 

His voice remains resonant six and a half decades after, carrying the weight of the Nigerian government’s empty promises with an urgency that refuses to fade. When his saxophone cries out from old recordings, riding rhythms only he could create, the lyrics cut as deeply today as they did decades ago. These songs and their biting lyrics remain as urgent now as they were when the Afrobeat king first unleashed them during the chaos of military rule that exposed corruption, greed, and the betrayal of ordinary Nigerians.

 

Consider “Authority Stealing.” That masterful indictment of governmental corruption resonates with startling clarity if played today. The lines are as biting now as they were in 1980 when it was released: “Authority people them go dey steal / Public contribute plenty money / Na authority people dey steal/ Authority man no dey pickpocket/ Pen go steal two billion naira / Na petty cash him go dey pick / Armed robber him need gun / Authority man him need pen.”

 

The strength and genius of this song lies in how Fela turns a profound political message into music people can dance to. The irony is almost painful: this is a song about stealing, yet time itself has stolen it, making it relevant again with every new government that fails to prove it wrong. Beyond the satire of mocking leaders as ‘authority thieves’ who rob with pens instead of guns, the linguistic texture of Fela’s work reveals the depth of his political vision. His seamless code-switching between Yoruba and pidgin English was a radical act, speaking directly to the people in the language of the street, while grounding his critiques in indigenous sensibilities.

 

What makes Fela’s social commentary particularly stand out is how he understood that the problems plaguing Nigeria were not just random events, but signs of a deeper, broken system. When he released “Zombie” in 1977, people might have thought he was only singing about soldiers. In fact, the album’s cover art, with its bold imagery of military uniforms and boots, reinforced that critique. “Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go,” he sneered. The track was, in many ways, a parable about how institutions, military or civilian, demanded compliance without thought. Nearly five decades later, Nigerians continue to wrestle with a state machinery that often moves without conscience, from police officers extorting at checkpoints to civil servants processing bribes as casually as paperwork. Independence promised freedom; what it delivered, Fela seemed to suggest, was a different kind of zombification.

 

This gap between political independence and genuine liberation defines Nigeria’s post-colonial tragedy. Fast-forward to Nigeria in 2025, at 65 years of independence, and the concerns Fela raised about this divide remain unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable. When he sang about the point of political independence without economic liberation, he was describing what would become Nigeria’s defining paradox: a nation blessed with resources yet cursed with poverty, rich in oil yet poor in infrastructure, abundant in human talent yet steadily losing its people to brain drain, an issue that has intensified dramatically in recent years.

 

The contemporary “Japa movement”—young Nigerians fleeing abroad for better opportunities—represents the ultimate failure of independence’s promise. Medical doctors, engineers, tech professionals, creatives, and academics now view emigration not as ambition but as survival, leaving behind a nation that desperately needs their skills. As of 2023, over 12,000 Nigerian doctors were practicing in the United Kingdom alone, according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health, with the United States, Canada, and Germany following closely as preferred destinations. This exodus reflects precisely what Fela warned about: a country rich in potential but unable to provide for its own people.

 

The economic side of Fela’s message cuts deeply in today’s reality. He often sang about how Nigeria has so much wealth, yet most people remain poor. That reality is clear in today’s numbers: according to the National Bureau of Statistics, inflation rose to 24.23% in March 2025 before easing to 22.22% in June and 21.88% in July. As of August 2025, the unemployment rate stood at 4.3%, according to official figures. However, these statistics mask a more troubling reality, the prevalence of underemployment, where millions work in informal sectors with irregular income and no benefits.

 

The World Bank’s 2025 report indicates that, in 2024, over 54% of Nigerians were living in poverty due to economic shocks, and this trend is expected to persist. But figures like these don’t tell the whole story. For millions of Nigerians, jobs are scarce, underpaid, or unstable, and the rising cost of living makes survival harder each day. Petrol, which sold for under ₦200 per liter in 2020, now stands at ₦820 per liter in 2025 following subsidy removal, a policy shift that has devastated household budgets and small businesses alike.

 

When Fela sang about “Suffering and Smiling” in 1978, he was referring to a Nigerian habit of carrying pain with a smile —a kind of strength that has now become a way to cope. Even at 65, Nigeria remains a country where hope and hardship coexist. At 65, Nigeria is still a country where hope lives side by side with hardship. But it makes one wonder: at what point does resilience turn into giving up?

 

Perhaps most troubling is how Fela’s critiques of leadership have remained constant while the faces in power have changed. In his “Coffin for Head of State” track released in 1980, written after the death of his mother, Funmilayo Kuti, following a military attack on Kalakuta in 1977, Fela delivers a scorching sermon: “Dem go dey cause confusion / Confusion everywhere.” The lyric is a portrait of endless dysfunction.

 

For a long time, Nigeria’s political class has often thrived on confusion, fake budgets, shifting policies, blurred lines between state resources and personal wealth. Confusion keeps the masses disoriented, preventing them from demanding accountability. And that same confusion is alive today in subsidy debates, electoral controversies, and the endless cycle of new administrations promising change while recycling old failures.

 

The critique he levelled at military dictators applies with equal force to civilian politicians, which suggests that Nigeria’s problems transcend individual personalities or even systems of government. The “Authority Stealing” he sang about has only taken new forms with alleged budget padding instead of outright looting, contract inflation instead of direct embezzlement, and sophisticated financial tricks instead of crude theft.

 

In “Sorrow, Tears and Blood,” released after soldiers attacked his Kalakuta Republic in 1977, Fela sang with heavy sadness: “Everybody run, run, run / Everybody scatter, scatter.” It is painful to hear those words now, when video clips from the #EndSARS protests and the Lekki Toll Gate massacre in 2020 resurface online, showing young Nigerians fleeing tear gas, ducking bullets, scattering in fear. Still, it is the same scene Fela described decades ago. Sixty-five years after independence, the state’s violence remains unchanged.

 

The musical style of these songs offers another perspective on Nigeria’s ongoing struggles. Fela’s use of call-and-response was like a musical form that let people voice their complaints together. That tradition of singing truth to power continued in later generations, from 2Baba to Burna Boy, from Falz’s “This Is Nigeria” to other songs that call out government failures.

 

It’s just like the memorable lines from 2Baba’s “E Be Like Say”: “E be like say you want to tell me another story again oh / E be like say you want to act another movie again oh / E be like say you want to code another coding again oh.” Here, 2Baba captures the difficulty of trusting a government that consistently fails to meet expectations. Burna Boy’s “Another Story” explores one of the darker realities of Nigerian life, highlighting the injustice people face from the government. The music video amplifies his message with violent imagery, seemingly referencing the Biafran war, as he rides on the back of a black horse, reminiscent of one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’ He sings: “They want make we all enter one corner, shebi o / ‘Cause e be lie them dey tell me since I was a baby o / All the times them go promise and fail o.”

 

The international side of Fela’s critique also deserves attention. His songs about colonialism and neo-colonialism foresaw the complicated ways Nigeria would interact with foreign powers, from IMF structural adjustment programs to modern Chinese loans. His warnings about cultural influence still matter today in debates about cultural appropriation and the global spread of Afrobeats.

 

Seen in this light, at 65 the question for Nigeria is no longer whether Fela was right, the evidence is all around us. The question is whether another 65 years will pass with new generations still dancing to the same indictments, or whether this elder nation will finally summon the courage to live up to the freedom it declared so long ago.