Fela Kuti Goes to Court

Abstract

In 1977, a group of soldiers raided the home of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the famous Afrobeat musician. Over a hundred people were injured, and the building was burned to the ground. Caving to public pressure, Nigeria’s military government staged a commission of inquiry into the raid. Using the commission’s extensive records, this chapter considers “inquiry” as a legal form. Where did it come from? What were its structures and objectives? What did it achieve, both for the state that convened it and for the people who testified before it? The Fela Kuti inquiry reveals the gender and class dimensions of military “revolutions,” and it illustrates what forms of redress were available to civilians. Commissions of inquiry offered a weak kind of justice, but Nigerians embraced them because they were one of the few tools that ordinary people had to speak back to the state.