nigeria whose weaponry comes from its old colonial muster britain coming up in a show of notation 30 years after legendary afrobeat pioneer colonial activist fela kuti called current nigerian president mohammad duble hari 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 and 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 actual 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 units 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

an ear 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 saws police squads way you are what is the situation being in recent days. in my area's been very well i stay very calm water them the reason i can was the protests 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 ice and medical testers 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 i'm equally the protests as they too are accusing police. then i rest ed some of the some of

the protesters and says they are cowards and things through as it's difficult to release this things. as well the police accuse them or storming the police station that's why the state shooting they denied it so well i like those come to she told them that it's a peaceful protest they have to be peaceful very peaceful and police you must not shoot 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 whether you think that's true and whether. you think it's quite interesting i think during your father's 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. i think when we were the 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 on 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 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 from protests with the protestors 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 as peaceful protest as wounded when he 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 everywhere you are you mention the shrine of course the site of the burned down legendary afrobeat nightclub and it's then you took president mccrone around that that place a couple of years ago 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 genius 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 rap world we buckle my father stan 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 or are 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 you could likely and how what 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 counter-protests it was the peaceful count up to 4 days why do you have these armed sticks why did you attack the 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 resident bihari in a song many years ago not a good way of thinking from back in those days has said he he dissolved 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 potus time this happened in my time we are 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 for the week i'm going to get 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 and 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 some israel 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 you know you see when you dig deeper you go into this corruption and bad leadership and bad governments people who 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 so so brilliant but people 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 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 7 ed 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 property 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 for resist what i am very afraid of it being hijacked by external or internal forces that don't have. all 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 is a export of and when one 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 75 years before when it came to the problems of human rights in africa i think a lot of that or it is already been don't i think what we have to be kept with is that we don't fall into the streets or likely be we have to be very careful of acts

and i think that's what i see right now days are knocking on the streets and this is very frightening so we have to be very careful over this i don't know if it is just 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 i would most likely to come up as we go and there we go to stop battle back in ourselves street to street and the other 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. the huge amount that the government spends recklessly the popularly 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 knee construction up white because the youths want boys all 'd boys and girls of 18. 25 are even in their thirty's are like look if i was seeing this in 171 and all its life and death to chose that that is evidence of the beating she went to because he was thinking 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 as if right before us as nigerian and we all knew it would niger that have left this shows to go to europe

and america they know why they left they do 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 bankruptcy thank you. thank you very much after the break from. the woods when it comes to fighting the tyranny of elites we ask award winning that julian poets the playwright give us his new book of poetry the actual takes on kipling mandela and the u.k. home office all the some more coming up in part 2 of going underground.

so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy people foundation of let it be an arms race is on offense very dramatic development only closely and going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk.

a lot of people talk about is this the beginning china as the world's superpower but they're not thinking about another end of an era in that all of beads as central banks. welcome back apollo one we spoke to the son of legendary nigerian afrobeat pioneer and anti colonialism activist for the cootie 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 in us as 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 protesters and before the introduction of tier 2 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 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 when we think about the conservative party one of their icons is churchill right and during the war they talked about fight. being for the arts like what else are we fighting for he was a noble in order to exactly as rich 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 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 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 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 guess dhamma they're urging politeness in the face of what you're criticizing is right wing populism via 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 they'd find a lot of nuance and potential for really intense a nuanced conversation 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 your dress immigrate. 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 but the methods by which is trying to achieve those are are there are . what was the word was 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 are very fond of kipling and he famously recited a poem and they are like man's been in me a mother. 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 'd of him which in is large he created the phrase the white man and the white man's burden was listener is not just a creation an invention of racism but the structural representation of the manifestations of it which the plays out across across across the the whole world and his legacy is intact that is what i'm attacking the man himself isn't this

noble of the tournament. but in 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 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 poetic imagination really definitely does this through our old he still taught and his legacy the things he created on top the alongside his work he just looms large as this is

a bastion of british poetry and literature but he has committed crimes through his work he legit. to my says a lot of things everything from trump to the white supremacist is 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 context 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 kneejerk society we now live in a lot of the time the context is lost or in jonesville races he says his is 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 the 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 amazing us have 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 them and they are out of the you know the excellence the gray areas a satellite using the app of the 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 are 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 of wine for instance which creates and alcoholism in many members of color societies south africa that is still play that power dynamics 2 plays out smith india very flesh 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. loan corporations are important. you referred to one corporation in this book people will know it from the special 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 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 and yet we're afraid of the baby milk scandal yet is lightness they are on but of course is the power of multinationals that arguably wrecked. the country you are descended from i'm thinking of shell and the oil in nigeria i'm thinking of unit lever who bought the ro 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 life sentence one of a few years back my life sentence was a point i 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 only 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. 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 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 current a virus the code an 18 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 radio radio to a radioactive spider bites him 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 here 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 nans of this fictional superhero in your thank you thanks for having me anyway llamas 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 back to 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 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 half human half 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 flesh a 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 innocent terms our public spaces a minute planning out future us horoscopes and for cos the dark parts of star charts or emptied out to 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 grids 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 0 song there were 2 view houses were allowed to leave prison was located and the only people had access to the story from investigators covered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. the great of nor.

for. for justice on our. teachers in france demanded better protection as the nation reels from the shock of samuel patty's mother at the hands of a terrorist. mind is many many things it's a tale of terror by tradition needs to be protected. poland's constitutional court bans almost all abortions sparking nationwide protests. and a 14 year old boy caught up in the war between armenia and azerbaijan tells r t how he got his family to safety. in tangata means a new jersey.