Being my father’s son made school depressing – Femi Kuti

The son of the late Afrobeats artist, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Femi Kuti, a Grammy-nominated Nigerian singer, admitted that attending school was “depressing” for him.

The multi-instrumentalist claimed some teachers and fellow students tried to humiliate and bully him because of his father’s excesses, but he refused to be humiliated.

During a conversation with well-known media figure Chude Jideonwo, he revealed this.

He said, “School was a very depressing time for me because you’ve teachers that liked him [my dad Fela] and teachers that didn’t like him. So, if I got into trouble with a teacher that didn’t like him, that teacher will just beat me because he didn’t like my father. I later came to the realization that they had a vendetta against my father.

“Don’t forget, the elite’s children were in the school. So, you have the rich children in the same school and they didn’t like me because I was Fela’s son. They would say, ‘your father smokes igbo [Indian hemp], your father is pant.’ And I would reply, ‘your father too is a slave.’

“My mouth was like a razor blade. If you abuse my father, by the time I abuse you, you will cry.”