Femi Kuti Reveals Fela Kuti’s Biggest Mistake

 In an exclusive interview, Femi Kuti clarified the fact that no one is above mistake as he revealed the biggest mistake of his father, Femi Kuti; afrobeat pioneer and political activist.

In a previous interview with Thenet, the 54-year-old music legend said his father found pleasure whenever he [Femi] failed in his academics.
Fela Kuti also wanted Femi to end up an area boy like him or even worse, therefore kept feeding his mind with the idea that formal education was not for him.<
Femi Kuti, who is the eldest son of Fela Kuti, inherited his father’s zeal for both music and activism. He got introduced to the saxophone and keyboard at an early age and was a member of his father’s band at the age of 16.

“My father channelled his energy into fighting corruption and injustice,” Femi recounts. “But then he made a great mistake as well. Everyone else was more important than his family.
“I would never put anybody before my family, because nobody will do the same for me. My children can’t go into any of your homes and you’ll answer them before your own children.
“For example, back then I’ll want to have a word with my dad but he’ll say ‘tell me what ever you want to say here’, right in front of anybody and everybody with him.
“Now, intelligence tells me today that back then a lot of the people around my father were SSS who always went back to tell the government his plans and what was going on in his family, so we were really out on the spot.
“Then the SSS were always parked in front of our house, you’ll see a man parked from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. reading newspapers and watching our house all day.
“My mother used to be scared back then because it was easy to hurt my father by hurting his kids, but I guess the government saw that he didn’t pay much attention to his children, so if they had hurt us, it wouldn’t have stopped him from doing and saying what he wanted, it would have fuelled his energy the more.”
Just like his father, Femi Kuti is also an activist and sings about political corruption, poverty and low-class living among Nigerians imposed by the government.
Femi’s biggest mistake would have been turning out into the bad boy his father wanted him to. But luckily, he grew up to be a responsible son of his father.