we're going underground as unverified reports suggest hundreds have been killed or injured in africa's most populous nation nigeria whose weaponry comes from its old colonial master britain coming up in a show of no nation 30 years after legendary afrobeat pioneer colonial activist. called current nigerian president mohammad who bihari an animal in a mad man's body we speak to his son femi kuti about continuing the fight and struggling for justice in the face of state violence hand while nigerians stand up to their beliefs in government how can they stand up to corporate power we ask award winning nigerian playwright and poet in new york and about the legacy of cancer we were and his new book the act which records with the reality of speaking

truth to power all the more coming up in today's going underground but 1st nigeria's largest city lagos has been the central hub of 2 weeks of mass protests that have turned global after a viral video allegedly showed a man being killed at the hands of an officer from the nigerian police force unit the special anti robbery squad joining me now from ogun state in the area is 4 times grammy nominated artist and political activist femi kuti son of afro beat by mia and colonial firebrand fela kuti thank you so much for coming on i know the situation is moving quite quickly different figures being given for the violence in lagos i know you were protesting the saw as police squads way you are what is the situation been in recent days. and my area has been very well i stay very calm but to them the reason i can was the protest passed in front of my house and then i had gone shots and i was i was like wow this will

erupt into a war in this area so i quickly got dressed and ran to the medical tests and i went to meet the d.p. or told him that it was impossible for him to kill anybody you have to stop shooting. and so i was like the intermediary between the protests as unequally says the protests i said to him accusing police. and i rested some of the some of the protesters and says they are cowards and things such as it's difficult to release this things. as well the police accuse them of storming the police station like that shooting they denied it so all i like discount issue told them that it's a peaceful protest they have to be peaceful very peaceful and police unit must not shoot because if you shoot them we're talking about a completely different. 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 whether 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 government and i think when we were we police were shooting we all run and when we saw on 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 con everybody down the 2nd time i went out was somebody said talks and people say it was a god makes a scent dogs to attack the protesters this is by this trial now in a cage and so my witch of the shrine i saw this and i quickly mobilize my boys and is trying to go back to that to defend the integrity because who protested 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 i think if you want to protest this peaceful protestors were wounded when they did 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 from where you are you mention the shrine of course the site of the burned down legendary afrobeat nightclub i understand you took president macro 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 wrap world we buckle my promise time 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 the team by the police 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 not it's more vicious i know of many cases medical is just people all detained indiscriminately for no reason and. they would have been complaining to that video came up under the you just said look we have had enough and is that will this peaceful protest what big government should up on was immediately dialogue with the protesters but they just sat back as

usual as usual and just did took it likely and how it was the government's response if i said to police that he said. it's obvious that somebody in government sent those dogs because they said it was a peaceful count up protests it was the peaceful count up to 4 days why did you have. sticks why did you are tied to peaceful protesters are we not we invited nigeria's ambassador on and obviously the government that is denying these other thugs and in fact your father name jack tapper hasn't 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 and even the gun am president who is blaming who is committed to police reform why did they wait so long i'm say this happened in my father started this happened in my time we're talking about 4050 years of police brutality that institution already they feel this same police force had been

dissolved. 5 times and then we can go a step farther we can point to the 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 took it 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 financing weapons training and so on for the nigerian security forces what do you think of these outside countries arming your police and we 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 they actually defend the oppressor against our citizens and that's same situation is in place 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 ignites in 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 so so brilliant what people who didn't see this things people people complained bitterly the i.m.f. it is 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 broken to sell when it legals 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 7 ed ed months now

into a quote in $1000.00 wisest or that why was it a disputed when does rise when political dispute that we saw on national t.v. it was little bags of rice very little this big. a household of maybe 20 people already country into what is this this is not i'm going to feed mao's old boy did you know you have to understand the extent of the political level here you see so when young people are going on the streets now destroying. property are stealing is shows 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 of course and probably freeze yes what i am very afraid of it being hijacked by external or internal forces that don't harbor. or the people and the people of this country just briefly very obviously area is actually a rich country billions and billions of dollars worth of oil is exported and when when another when africa's richest a capital nation was destroyed by britain france and. the united states arguably libya there wasn't much much talk about that. this police brutality in nigeria is getting the support of celebrities like riana beyonce

anthony josh where i understand has been in contact with you do you think that more can be done in the case of nigeria after so many failures before when it came to problems of human rights in africa i think a lot of that or it's already been don't i think what we have to be kept with is that we don't fall into a search it's just not likely be and we have to be very careful x. and i think that's what i see right now that it's unlikely on the streets and this is very frightening so we have to be very careful. of this i dont know if it is just the co people who are just completely fed up all the protests has been hijacked by internal or external forces for another 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 and we must not go in the direction of libya where wuornos are going to come up . and they were going to stop back to back analysis of street to street another way

that this could have been so that ages ago is as soon as for instance could be the one to start it the senate the presidency and all arms of god mitch the bridges that security allowances on their salaries when you hear about the huge amount that the government spends recklessly the top people had this is in the papers it's everywhere the pa people see this the people are angry and they expect people to just sit back yeah after year generation after generation and just accept government been bastardized by few this will not it will never gone look my father's nic it's probably not why because the huge one tree boys of 'd boys and girls of 18 to 25 if only that that is alike look if i was seeing this in 171 on all it's life and death to chose that evidence of the beatings he went to because he was singing about this corruption. i'm still existing in that time and

in look out men don't have a father once they see their grandfather us they have made nothing of their lives i didn't want to go to that same group you see it's wrong what i'm to stand up for their rights how how do we just how do you all kind of one reason how can one say they don't see this problem that has existed look if it's right before us as nigeria and we all know it would nigerians that i've left this shows to go to europe and america then why did ect they did not have hope in this community in this country while sedately they went full grown up hostels that's why they let they want a better a better life without families they didn't believe in the system so we all mold the chal the government knows that the government condie my bitch but it got mendoza true and actually many fucks for the government to deny thank you 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 the jury and

poets the playwright to give us the lambs his new book of poetry the actual takes on kipling mandela and the u.k. home office on a similar coming up in particular going underground. a lot of people talk about is this the beginning of china as the world's

superpower but they're not thinking about another end of an era and the apple of beads as central banks. 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 the new book the actual by nigerian poet and playwright anyone lums 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. many orcs run deep right across every every exit on 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 when we think about the conservative party one of their icons is churchill right and during the war he talked about fighting for the arts like what else are we fighting for he was a noble in the it exactly as a hedge it's pathetic to see them got themselves to got their own founding principles of course they have robust denials and 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 sets. thing else i 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 effect of enough sometimes in papering 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 a finding of 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 dhamma 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 and noise conversation 'd we've become too needs or could 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 no we have we have to do better we have to think them of people think of them as 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 a motive force is trying to do but the with but the methods by which is trying to

achieve those are are there are. what was the world worth with a clean record holder poets have words for everything i thought. this is why i write a riddle now we have time to think i mean do boris johnson very fond of kipling and he famously recited a poem in a light man's been in me in ma. and yet in this new book of yours you say then i'll lean to whisper in kipling's ear 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 legitimized not just the creation and 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 there's no goal of the tournament. but him 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 exist why they are there why they're guilty of things that they have no power over and it's because the next us in the 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 who had to give education really definitely does this to our oh he's 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 lived it. to my says 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 criticism like that by saying it's a matter of context and in your poem number 77 you you say that the contacts the johnson uses 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 is were is theirs. but the words he used are of a racist think and there they were to questions they 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 as 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 space to bring women they are out of the you know the excellence the gray areas a shadow like you think that happens or 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 disto 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 still plays out as for instance i discussed. the repercussions of the black farm workers who were paid in barrels 'd of lying for instance which created alcoholism in many members of color societies 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 tell her about that he said you don't understand we have to take the i.m.f. the corporations are important. you referred to one corporation in this book people will know it from this crescent machines kit their turnover is hundreds of millions hundreds of can 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 a really close maternal relationship 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 society's reaganite 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 i'm thinking of shell and loyal in nigeria i'm thinking of unity of our ports the row nizer company which was the 1st company is that is 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 do you think the legacy of ken's or 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 our amounts of campaigners who are we aware on the african soil of the challenge facing the world because of cancer he was legacy because of the work and the campaigns i started when i was a life and his children still carry on that work. no the book ends with the poem that mentions the 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 were everything from epidemiologists the scientists who were 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 penguin ingested and that got me to think about what happens when human beings consume an animal. spider man famously comes about when a radioactive radiate 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 point 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. thank you thanks for having me anyway lamas 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 wiki 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 that man. 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 enough to sharpen fear down to tight to the weapon with which to nor the criminal underworld

down to the poppy nothing's protecting us all the promise was should and the most essence into a child no matter what damage lose 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 our 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. terms of 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. when the promise retreated it left its fangs in the sky it's in our pockets it's. between us in shopping lines it's a warning to return should we seize goods and once the claymore from the survived. the. secret prisons are not usually what comes to mind when thinking about europe however even the most prosperous can be deceived within the zeros on the work to view houses were allegedly preserved was located and the only people had access to the story to investigators covered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. the great of nor in.

for. justice. here in shock among teachers in france after one of their own with brutally murdered in the capital last week we speak to an educated their. mind is many many things till after my position to be protected. and slogans told court abounds almost all abortion sparking nationwide protests and begging the age old question the right to life or freedom of choice. and while the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan over the go no karabakh rages on a 14 year old boy tells r.t. his story of saving his family dragging them out of the cornflakes zone while under fire. in tongues i don't mean going to.