It has emerged how the late Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti one day stormed the corporate office of EMI Records in Lagos, harassed the company’s Managing Director over unpaid royalties and ended up driving off his brand new Mercedes Benz.
One of the few people who witnessed the drama but who preferred to speak on condition of anonymity recounted the event to TS Weekend. “It was a few years after Kalakuta Republic was razed by ‘unknown soldiers’ and Fela was broke, so he and his boys stormed EMI Studios in Lagos. At EMI, Fela discovered that the Managing Director, a white man, was driving the latest model of Mercedes Benz car while his accountant, a Nigerian, was driving a ramshackle Beetle car.
Fela had queried the white man, saying: ‘your accountant has been working in EMI for many years, and he’s driving a Beetle. But you just came to Nigeria and you are driving the latest model of Mercedes Benz. Is it fair? Meanwhile, you have paid me only 5000 Pounds for 13 albums and you have been making money from my works. You are driving a Benz and I don’t even have a car. How can you pay me 5,000 Pounds for 13 albums?’”
The albums Fela was talking about included ‘Jeun Ko Ku’ and ‘Gentleman’ among others. However, intimidated by Fela, the MD had jokingly given Fela his car keys. And Fela’s response was simple. ‘If you give me your car, I will take it’.
As soon as the white man stepped out of his office to pick something, Fela told his boys to hop into the cab that brought them, which was already blocking the gate, while he would drive off the Benz. At the gate, the security men had moved to stop Fela from going away with the MD’s car, but using the cab as a decoy, he and his crew sped off!