we asked 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 mia and colonial firebrand fela kuti thank you so much very 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 salas police squads way you are what is the situation been in recent days. and my area has been very well i stay very calm water 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 he had to stop shooting . and so i was like the intermediary between the protests as an equally as the protests i said to him accusing police. then 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 bligh's 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 you 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 the going to 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 the government's assent ochs to attack the protesters 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 will 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 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 enough which has to be condemned more i think we need more war 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 wrapped 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 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 to police that he 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 out i'd be peaceful protesters are we know we invited nigeria's ambassador on and obviously the government is denying these other thugs and in fact your father named 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 and 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 potus time this happened in my time we're 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 go into the police itself. the police college is that the police themselves i'm out cheated be way believe the way did they acted in coutts 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 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 actual 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 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 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 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 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 easiest 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 who's been in contact with you do you think that more come be done in the case of nigeria after a 75 years before when it came to 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 tricia likely be and we have to be very careful of acts 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 the poor people who are just completely fed up or the protests has been i jacked by internal or external forces for you know that agenda what i do know one thing i'm not 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 would most likely to come up. and

they were going to stop a battle back in 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 'd security allowances on their salaries what about the huge amount that the government spends recklessly the poor 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 knee construction up white because the youths want boys all 'd 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 as if 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 bankruptcy thank you. thank you very much after the break from.

the woods when it comes to fighting the tyranny of elites award winning the julian poets the playwright if you elam's 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. americans love.

this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at 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. of the really interesting back and think about the longer deeper history housings man in the united states not just that question of the american dream but the bigger question if you dream is for. welcome back in pa one we spoke to the son of legendary nigerian afrobeat pioneer and angelo nudism 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 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 protesters 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 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 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 we 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 and 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 affect 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 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 a nuance conversation 'd we've become too needs or become too reactionary we just listen and respond to headlines you don't look at what lines beneath and that is how deployment 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 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. 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 and they are like man's burning me in mamma mia 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 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 exists 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 you're on concerned 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 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 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 just 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 in jonesville races he says his is were is theirs. but the words he used are of a racist think in there they are 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 in this challenging of preconceived notions you see that as 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 the 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 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 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 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 still plays out as for instance i discussed. the repercussions of the black farm workers who were paid in barrels 'd of wine for instance which created alcoholism in many members of color societies south africa that is still played that power dynamic still plays out in the a very flat 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 question of machines get their turn over 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 you know the physical nutrition but there's something spiritual something that's 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 lawyer in nigeria i'm thinking of unit lever who ports the row nizer company which was 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 do you think the legacy of cannes or. lives own you wrote life sentence one of a few years back to life sentence was a point that looked at the circumstances of cancer deaths the commission between shell and the nigerian government at the time and and i think his legacy still lives on there are environmentalists and environmental campaigners who are we aware 'd 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 he has 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 in the coronavirus you're 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 current a virus the code in 1000 virus and they traced it to 2 possible beginnings from bats that were in just the over from 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 radio to radiate a radioactive spider bite and i thought that that was that is what should have happened when we ate a battle when

a bat essence was infused with humanity's essence but instead it became this this this virus which is killed so many and 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. 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 whose plane was infamously brought down in vienna on 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 our 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 pope in 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 of flesh the 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 occurred to crown

around coronation recruit corrode in innocent terms our public spaces our 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 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 and shopping lines it's a warning to return should we seize goods and once the claymore from the survived. next as a financial survival guide stacey let's learn

a salad fill out let's say i'm not so i get. angry some thanks for the fight 9. thank you for. destroy that's right. that's slavery. secret prisons and usually what comes to mind when thinking about europe however he even the most prosperous can be deceived we've been busy roads all the way to view houses were allowed to leave prison was located and the only people had access to the story investigators covered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. the great ignore. the full. justice.

teachers in france the men better protection as the nation real from the shock of murder the hands of a terrorist. mind this many many. it's a tale of terror my position to be tricked and. also this hour a 14 year old boy caught up in the war between armenia and azerbaijan tells our team what his family lived through and how they got safety. from full fledged are you seeing john nobody in time got a mean good uncle she's a ninja bites for what i mean doubtful. and public anger boils over in the italian city of naples as a region wide lockdown takes the facts on a surge in coronavirus pieces.