police you must not cheat because if you shoot them we're talking about a completely different issue right now some of them some of them are sisters in ogun said they feared for their lives in your presence save their lives i don't know where the you think that's true and whether. you think it's quite interesting i think during your father's a life during your father's life nigerian authorities imprisoned him constantly harassed him and yet now the cootie name can somehow save lives against against the bihari government. i think when we were police were shooting they all run and when they saw on the they got the confidence to walk back to the police so we all walked back to the police station together and so i went police saw me ok to be kind of respects me it was my duty to come everybody down the 2nd time i went out was somebody said talks and people say it was the government's assent talks to attack

the processes this is by this trial now in a cage and so my witch of the show and i saw this and i quickly mobilize my boys i was trying to go back to that to defend integrity because with protests with the protesters and when they saw me they were all happy but at the time i got back the somehow i chased the dogs away this dog skin with sticks and clubs and cutlasses and i think if you want to protest this peaceful protesters were wounded when they didn't manage to defend themselves and defend our territory the ads were getting various reports no official kind of figures hundreds dead or wounded in lagos about 3 hours or so every where you are you mention the shrine of course the site of the burned down legendary afrobeat nightclub and is then you took president mccrone around that that place a couple of years ago if there has been international condemnation donna grab the

foreign secretary here is expressed concerns what have you thought of the international. response to what's been happening in i think i think it's not a no which has to be condemned more i think we need more wall genus to speak out we need more politicians to speak out i think what happened. we really have to go to the beginning of this issue and probably wrapped world we buckle my promise to now this. jury my father it was convenient for the police to be very brutal but he was talking about police brutality the top one when he went to prison is all or most of people that were. locked up between by the police he spoke about it they were there in detention for no reason which in which in trial for yes this police brutality didn't just stuck yesterday now it's more vicious i know of many cases medical is just people all detained indiscriminately for no reason and. people have been complaining to that video came up and the u.s.

just said look we have had enough and is that all this peaceful protest what the government should up don't was immediately dialogue with the protesters but they just sat back as usual as usual and just did took it likely and how what was the government's response if i said the police they said although. it's obvious that somebody in government said those talks because they said it was a peaceful contact protests it was the peaceful count up to 4 days why did you have sticks why did you attack the peaceful protesters that we know we invited nigeria's ambassador on and obviously the government that is denying these other thugs and in fact your father name jack tapper resident bihari in a song many years ago not a good way. from back in those days has said he he does all of the special and the robbery squad so-called so that even the gun am president who is claiming who is committed to police reform why did it with so long i'm say this happened in my

potus time this happened in my time we are talking about 4050 years of police brutality that institution already is a failed this same police force had been dissolved. 5 times and then we can go a step farther we can point to good police itself the police college is that the police themselves i'm out cheated be way believe the way did they acted think out so they actually made it so brutal that it's a get out on the. other. i mean that as for the training and letter has been written to the foreign secretary here in britain about a u.k. agency that has apparently been supplying the special anti robbery squad i don't think we've been able to clarify whether there's been a letter back what do you make of overseas countries have financing weapons training and so on for the nigerian security forces what do you think of these outside countries arming your police it will say where independent does that make

sense independence means we don't need rain dependent to survive and to do excuse me do things on our own now we have to understand what is the police force the police force will settle from colonial times it was the actual defend the oppressor against our citizens and that's same situation is increased no you see when you dig deeper you go into this corruption and bad leadership and bad governments people have had enough let's talk about because igniting all the politics i don't know why given for over 1000 many we did see people where people are starving the government says that god is also 1000000000 people didn't see this things people people complained bitterly the i.m.f. has 3 and a half $1000000000.00 so that nigeria could cope with coronavirus and reduced prices using the people of nigeria haven't seen the 3 and a half 1000000000. it didn't get to meet you didn't get to anybody i know in my area and i'm telling you right now on thursday there's this warehouse that was

broke until somewhere in lagos i think it's festival so big store with tons and tons and tons of rice how come what was that i mean we are in i think 78 months now it's all caught in $1000.00 why is a store there why was it a disputed when described when politics were distributed that we saw on national t.v. it was little bags of rice very little this big for a household of maybe 20 people already called cleaned up what is this this is not i'm going to feed bows all boy did you know you have to understand the extent of the problem to level here you see so when young people are going on the streets now destroying. property are stealing issues the extent of how dissent franchise the population is. you know there's been condemnation from the joe biden campaign and so on and i'm sure you know your

father certainly knew of how popular protest could be hijacked by. imperial forces we arguably saw that in libya we saw that in syria but do you think because bihari is making deals with china and with russia these protests that you support arguably or certainly you support the concerns can be hijacked by imperialist i support a cause and probably for resist what i am very afraid of it being hijacked by external or internal forces that don't have. or the people and the people of this country just briefly very obviously the jury is actually a rich country billions and billions of dollars worth of oil as a export of and when when another when africa's richest the capital nation was destroyed by britain france and. the united states arguably

libya. there wasn't much so much talk about. this police brutality in nigeria as getting the support of celebrities like riana beyonce anthony joshua understand has been in contact with you do you think that more come be done in the case of nigeria after a so many failures before when it came to the problems of human rights in africa i think a lot of that or it is already being don't i think what we have to be kept for all is that we don't fall into a situation it's just a likely be and we have to be very careful of x. and i think that's what i see right now there's an ikea in the streets and this is very frightening so we have to be very careful of this i don't know if it's just 'd the poor people who are just completely fed up or the protests has me and i jacked by internal or external forces for you know that agenda what i do know one thing i like is not the answer of the situation i do know another that war will not solve

us we must not go in the direction of libya where war laws are going to come up as we go and then we're going to stop battle battling ourselves street to street another way that this would have been solved in ages ago is arsonists for instance could be 90 started the senate the presidency and all arms of governments that reduced their security allowances on their salaries what about the huge amount that the government spends recklessly because people had it's in the papers it's everywhere the populace see this pub people are angry and they expect people to just sit back yeah after year generation after generation i just accept government been bastardized by a few this will not it will never go on to look my father's new construction up white because the youths want boys all boys and girls of 18. to 25 even in their thirty's i like look if i was seeing this in 171 on all it's life

and death to chose that that is evidence of the beating she went to because he was singing about this corruption and he still existed in that time then they look at many of their fathers see their grandfathers they have made nothing of their lives i didn't want to go through the same route you say it's wrong for them to stand up for their rights how how do we just how do how can one reason how can one say they don't see this problem that has existed and look if it's right before us as nigerian and we all knew it would nigeria that have left this shows to go to europe and america they know why they left they did not have hope in this community in this country while today leave they went for going to pastures that's why they left they wanted a better life for their families they didn't believe in the system and so we all know the truth the government knows the truth the government can deny the truth but the government knows the truth and there are too many facts for the government to deny because he thank you. thank you very much after the break from boris johnson

to batman how powerful are woods when it comes to fighting the tyranny of elites we ask award winning that julian poet and playwright if you are alone does new book of poetry the actual takes on kipling mandela and the u.k. home office all this and more coming up in part 2 of going underground. you know what i mean maybe at their school i don't think about it i don't mean you guessed it i don't mean not new dorp or. i kind of but i wonder. if they now i think it's have enough. members of the african mafias conway's them safe and quick passage to europe but once they. leave they are in slieve they count speech europe. will not some of them maybe

a mom and i couldn't you know if this unit can get it out i mean. they sold the. concorde of the import data because the persona that i can't even. be the norm in. an entire village in alaska. if another country trying to wipe out an american. we do everything i. want to they escaping climate change is the same threat right now alaska some of the fastest coastal. in the world lost about

30 feet. 35 feet on the ground in just about 3 months while we were measuring. it is fast paced the river is 30 closer than how many. more were part of the 1st from.

welcome back apollo one we spoke to the son of legendary nigerian afrobeat pioneer a 90 colonialism activist fela kuti about speaking truth to power in the face of government oppression and murder but how far can the power of words really go in confronting the tyranny of elites and corporations a new book the actual by nigerian poet and playwright anyone elam's explores this concept and more as well as reappraising the legacies of figures like rudyard kipling and nelson mandela and i sat down with him before the police killings of nigerian protestors and before the introduction of jihad to coronavirus restrictions here in london i started by asking him what he thought of the u.k. government's apparent suggestion that those in the arts should retrain to defacto help capitalism that was disheartening for people in my industry i work in theatre

as well so and orcs run deep right across every every action every level of the sector from the writers to the musicians to the directors and the ripples the effect has been horrendous because. what we think or think about the conservative party one of their icons is churchill right and during the war they talked about fighting for the arts like what else are we fighting for the ones i know will in order to exactly as rich as pathetic to see them got themselves to got their own founding principles of course they have robust denials i think they're backtracking they got a tweet deleted saying no that's not what they meant and you're. just touch on some of this amazing book of poetry they actually came out of frustration a couple of years ago the american president said something else that was foul and impossible and i began to rant about him and i just wrote it as a stream of consciousness on my phone link in all the insults that i knew that

existed about him in an attempt to make myself feel better and the more i did so the murder realized how words don't don't effect of enough sometimes in pain. poring over the cracks we feel in our souls and our spirits and that is how the poem sort of implodes in itself and a lot of the poems begin that way from a place of anger but in negotiating of finding your truth something humane and subtle comes out and sneaks out on a point folds in itself and it covers a range of topics from climate change to immigration to racism to the implosion of you know political and personal spaces you mention the trump so-called centrists like joe biden kamala harris kissed omma they're urging politeness in the face of what you're criticizing is right wing populism. what do you think the centrists a centrist would make of this i think if they read the book and really listen to the poem and go past the titles thats fine

a lot of nuance and potential for really intense annoyance conversation 'd we've become too needs or can become too reactionary we just listen and respond to headlines you don't look at what lines beneath and that is how the points in the book are constructed on the other hand surely you can be accused of kneejerk responses to our home secretary pretty big tell you address immigration and asylum in the book i think cajun innocent people i think kids and people who come here for the for the sole crime of the pursuit of happiness i think that needs to be there no grays within that i think i don't think it's needs or to think you know we have we have to do better we have to think them of people think of this people seeking for better lives rather than to cage them as animals i don't think there's any gray area in that we can understand the motive force is trying to do but the with by the methods by which is trying to achieve those are are there are. once was the word was with a clean record holder poets have words for everything and. this is why rewrites of

ribbon are we have time to think i mean do boris johnson very fond of kipling and he famously recited. a poem and they are like man's been in me an ma. and yet in this new book of yours you say then i'll lean to whisper in kipling's here before flicking the eager trigger well i'm a skipping die because well what i'm really looking at is the legacy of kipling the shadow of him which in is large he created the phrase the white man and the white man's burden was listening is not just a creation an invention of racism but the structure of representation the manifestations of it which the plays out across across across the whole world and his legacy is intact that is what i'm attacking the man himself is that is noble of the tournament. but other than that is what i'm trying to do to to see the beginnings of things to trace back the root the nexus of this is like the problems

that are still playing out we don't really discussed invention of racism itself we don't do so we fight against it in every day you know in every way shape or form but we forget about the nuance and it also helps white people articulate the continuum that they exist in why why white societies exists why they are there why they're guilty of things that they have no power over and it's because the next us nuance that the beginning of the conversations is lost on them if you don't know where your own concerns are and you think there's a sort of political correctness. in the in that kipling still exerts this power over the poor to give education really definitely does this to our old he still taught and his legacy the things he created on top the alongside his work he just looms large just this this bastion of british poetry and literature but he has committed crimes through his work he legitimizes a lot of things everything from trump to the white supremacist marching through the

streets of america in hungary is all of that the white man's burden these are the repercussions well boris johnson of course always replies to criticize. like that by saying it's a matter of context and in your poem number 77 you you say that the context the johnson used to excuse some of his comments shatter above their heads shards showering their flesh yeah tell me about context is important but because of the needs are exciting we now live in a lot of the time the context is lost when john still races he says his as it were is theirs. but the words he used are of a racist think in there because they are on the continuum of the white man's burden and when those who followed his work used his very language to attack people of color in the streets they weren't thinking baris wrote this in context they just had to insult and they weaponized it that's what i'm picking up and this

challenging of preconceived notions you see that has the job of poetry i'm thinking particularly of the lionizing or say of nelson mandela you try and save the reputation of winnie mandela i do because her reputation was was decimated and mandela states and you know the leader he was also he exists in a pool of untouchable light and i think if we deconstruct that as we should all things we can find the gray areas the new and says in that and under that there is space to bring women they are out of the you know the excellence the gray areas a shadow not heeding the apples of inequality as i think you kind of refer poetically it is worse now than under a punt and i guess the deals in broke out of the time. have still played out in the way they have i think because power and money still stays in white hands in south africa the land is still owned by huge swathes of white. african farmers and there is money tied to that land and because of that the poverty still still still has

the place out as for instance i discussed. the repercussions of the black farm workers who were paid in barrels 'd of lines. instance which creates and alcoholism in many members of color society in south africa that is still play that power dynamics to plays out in the a very flash i don't a name dropper when i asked her about that he said you don't understand we have to take the i.m.f. loan corporations are important. you refer to one corporation in this book people will know it from the special machines kit their turnover is hundreds of millions hundreds of in a poem of 150 words cannot be weaponized against big multinationals against nestlé can it be weaponized. i don't know if it can be weaponized but hopefully those who use their products to buy their products will be aware of the skeletons in their closet to think about it we know about the benefits of really close maternal

relationships between mother and children the benefits of breastfeeding goes beyond the physical nutrition but there's something spiritual something that's that the passes between mother and child that goes beyond language and for the for the generations of mothers who are educated by nestle's marketing campaign there are repercussions of that plays out across the societies they denied all wrongdoing that you have referring to the baby milk scandal yet his likeness they on but of course is the power of multinationals that arguably wrecked. the country you are descended from and thinking of shell and the oil in nigeria i'm thinking of unit lever who ports the row nizer companies are the 1st companies that this by british agents essential to turn a jury into a factory those companies are still played out they still act operates in a country. you think getting the legacy of cancer we were lives on you wrote a life sentence one of a few years back my life sentence was

a point that looked at the circumstances of cancer rebus death the commission between shell and the nigerian government at the time and and i think his legacy still lives on there are environmentalists and of amounts of campaigners who are we aware on the african soil of the challenge facing the world because of ken sorry was legacy because of the work and the campaigns i started when i was a life and his kids children still carry on that work. now the book ends with the poem that mentions a museum commission but i would ask you about batman because there haven't been many poems or artistic expression was of what it feels like on the coronavirus you know a little bit of roman and tell me about. the very start of the pandemic there where everything from epidemiologists the scientists who are trying to find out the

roots of the coronavirus the code in 1000 virus and they traced it to 2 possible beginnings from bats that were in just over from or from pengelly in the ground just that and that got me to think about what happens when human beings consume an animal. spider man famously comes about when a radio radiates a radioactive spider bite and i thought that that was that is what should have happened when we ate back to when a bat essence was infused with humanity's essence but instead it became this this this virus which is killed so many and harmed so many and the thinking about that i thought of batman as an idea as a concept in a city not dissimilar to london to new york and just the sparks of the plane came together and it's about fear it's about power is about capitalism but it's all through the lens of this fictional superhero in your thank you thanks for having me

in you alums there speaking to me earlier in his book the actual is out now and in a moment in your perform his poem that man will be back on monday the birthday of us backed coup victim and former president of bolivia even more as his plane was infamously brought down in vienna own suspicions by washington that we keep leaks facilitated cia whistleblower edward snowden was on board bound for cuba until then you can catch all our interviews on a you tube channel and difficult to join the underground by following us on twitter facebook instagram and his if you elam's with his poem batman. the promise was should one fall into a cave of bats should one be engulfed by hundreds of beating wings should one be beaten scratched or bitten one would emerge whole of human invincible the nuff to sharpen fear down to tight to the weapon with which to nor the criminal urban underworld down to the poppy nothing's protecting us all the promise was sure then the most essence seeped into

a child no one knew what damage loose power bruise he would accept himself as host his body a fleshly petri dish to guide his mutation to goodness instead the promise turned ravenous leapt from host to host country to country blood to blood its 1000000 teeth chewing through a simple lungs because down our offices it hung on our clothes we fled from cities that clung to our cause we stayed in bed it came for our dreams a curdled crown around coronation recruit corrode in in the sun our public spaces a minute planning out future us horoscopes and for cos the dark parts of star charts or emptied out to in the city was stillness the promise gorge in an unknown that lives our startle terror and when the promise retreated it left its fangs in the sky its claws in our pockets its foul breath huffed between us and shop in

lines it's a warning to return should we seize bijan once to claim more from the survived. it was a very nice show for a president. and i could have said no thank you or i could have said thank you and i said i'll take it and now it's time to ensure they. don't travel thank you says the driver much to their. name whatever you want to name i mean i don't know how come that news that. i had a recorder or e.

network that's totally dishonest c.n.n. is you know 100 percent negative. changes so sometimes i'll say that's going to be a great story be a pretty good report another as good as you. will see what happens. i always say who knows what we'll see on the field it will be 6 of us. americans love. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country a large understood the bargain you get a hope and then you know rebel right as the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. and think about the longer deeper history housings men in the united states not just that

question of the american dream. question if you had the dream for. and shock among teachers in france up to one of the code was brutally murdered in the capital last week we speak to an educator the. mind is many many things it's still my position to be tricked or to. put on top or pounds always support abortion spots nationwide protests impacting the age old question the right to life little freedom of choice. and while the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan openable and i care about it rages on a 14 year old boy tells r t his story of saving his family dragging them out of the conflict so.

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