and so i was like the intermediary between the protests a senate police report as i said to him accusing police. and iris ted some of the some of the protesters and says they are cowards and things through as it is difficult to release the stings blades as well the police accuse them of storming the police station that's why the state shooting they denied it so all i like just can't tell 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 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 come everybody down the 2nd time i went out was somebody said talks and people say it was the government's assent ochs 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 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 had chased the dogs away this dog skin with sticks and clubs and cutlasses and i think if you want to protest this peaceful protestors were wounded

when they didn't manage to defend themselves and defend our territory they add we're 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 i understand 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 people that were. locked up the team 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 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 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 do you have losses and 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 of thinking 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 they wait so long i'm say this happened in my father started 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 further 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 actually think out so they actually made it so brutal that it took it out on the. attack 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 if 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 the absolute defend the oppressor against our citizens and that's same situation is increased not 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 it got this so so brilliant 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 me it 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 distributed when described when pilotage 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 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 75 years 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 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 over this i don't know if it is 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 i would most likely to come up as we go and there we go 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 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 new construction up white because the youths want boys all boys and girls of 18. 25 even in the thirty's i like look if i was seeing this in 171 and 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 grandfather 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 you 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 the daily if they went for granted pastors that's why they left they wanted better 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 any crazy thank you. thank you very much after the break from. the woods when it comes to fighting the tyranny of elites award winning that julian poets the playwright in us is new book of poetry the actual takes on kipling mandela and the u.k. home office although some more coming up in part 2 of going underground.

to. the. 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 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 fighting for the arts like what else are we fighting for the ones i know will in order to secularize it which is 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 lincoln all the insults that i knew that existed about him in an attempt to make myself feel better and the more i did so them are realized how words don't 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. 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 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 this people seeking for better lives rather than to cage them as animals and i don't think there's any gray area in that we can understand the motives or she's 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 are 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 burn in me in my. area 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 this large he created the phrase the white man and the white man's burden was listener is not just the creation and invention of racism but the structural representation of 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 his name is not 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 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 lengths ideas work he just looms large just this this 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 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 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 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 statesman 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 grey 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 satellite using the app of their 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 lander 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 them place out as for instance i discussed. the repercussions of the black farm workers who were paid in barrels of wine for instance which created alcoholism in many members of color societies south africa that is to play that power dynamics to plays out within the a very flesh i don't a name dropper when i said earlier about that he said you don't understand we have to take the i.m.f. corporations are important. you refer 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 woods cannot be weaponized against big multinationals against nestlé can 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 at the ever of any of 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 company which was the 1st company established 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 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 cancer he 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 and they were ingested and that got me to think about what happens when human beings consume an animal. spider man famously comes about when a radioactive 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 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 u.s. backed coup victim and former president of bolivia even moralez who's plane was intimately brought down in vienna own suspicions by washington did 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 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 in the most essence seep 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 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 close in our pockets it's. between us and shop in lines it's a warning to return should we seize goods and once to claim war from the survived. it was a very nice show from president putin that 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 introduce my special mr don't travel thank you says very much was the. name whatever you want to

name i mean i don't know how would i come that news that's dishonest telecom that a recorder or e. network that's totally dishonest c.n.n. is says you know 100 percent negative i care to. change fast changes so sometimes i'll say wow that's going to be a great story be a pretty good report and others good as you. will see what happens who knows i always say who knows what we'll see on the field it will be success. americans love. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country

a large understood the bard. you get a hoe and then you know rebel right that's the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. and be really interesting to dial it back and think about the longer deeper history what housings meant in the united states not just that question of the american dream but the bigger question of who the dream is and for . so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race is on all fronts very dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful it's very critical time to sit down and talk.

teachers in france demand better protection as the nation reels from the shock of samuel l. parties murder at the hands of a terrorist. mind is many many things it's still my position to be protected. also this hour a 14 year old boy caught up in the war between armenia and azerbaijan tells r t what his family's lived through and how they got to safety. john nobody in the meantime got a mean good uncle today nato to sort out. and public anger boils over in the italian city of naples as a region wide lockdown takes up the fact surged in coronavirus.