11: Endless Returns

Summary

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

Episode 11: Endless Returns

Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Jad Abumrad (Higher Ground)

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the role of art—specifically Fela Kuti's music—as a tool of resistance and a force for change amid cycles of brutality and unrest in Nigeria. Through gripping oral histories and personal accounts, host Jad Abumrad connects the circular, unending grooves of Afrobeat to Nigeria’s own spiraling history of political repression, youth uprising, and state violence. The story centers on the 2020 #EndSARS protests against police brutality, the trauma of loss, and questions about the enduring and haunted power of Fela's art to inspire, rally, and ultimately, to bring hope—or hard truth.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Spiral of Time: Music as Metaphor (00:36–05:37)

• Jad Abumrad introduces the episode's central image: the spiral or loop, as found in Fela's music and in Nigerian history.
  • "You listen to these Fela songs and you hear a groove that just repeats and repeats and repeats... finally you give in. You fall into a trance where you let go... and you just lose time." (01:28–01:41)
• Contrasts Western notions of linear progress with Nigeria's "circular" experience of political and personal history.
• At Nikkei Art Gallery, Jad observes how the same leaders return in different eras, paralleling the repetitive grooves of Afrobeat:
  • "It's the same man. Again and again, history stubbornly repeating like that ostinato." (04:42)

2. The EndSARS Movement and Personal Loss (05:42–12:45)

• Obianuju Iloaya recounts her bond with her brother Chijoke, his 2012 abduction by SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad), and her family's desperate search for him.
• Exposes systemic police corruption: extortion, torture, and killings, as corroborated by Human Rights Watch's Enieti Eweng (09:32).
• Obianuju’s family's trauma: Selling land to bribe SARS, fruitless legal efforts, and searching rivers for Chijoke's body.
  • "He had to swim in the river... turning the bodies... just looking out for that mark." (11:33–11:43)
• Eight years in limbo, with activism and hope kept alive despite immense loss.

3. Viral Outrage to Mass Protest: #EndSARS Ignites (12:45–19:05)

• Rinu Adwalla ("Savvy Renu") describes seeing viral videos of SARS abuses in 2020, sparking her to organize protests:
  • "I felt an obligation to do something." (14:32)
• She and others commit to a multi-day occupation outside Lagos police HQ; Rinu hides her protest involvement from her parents out of fear.
• Fela’s music becomes the protest soundtrack:
  • "That was a song that I can't even forget, not even in my dreams." (Rinu, on Fela's "Suffering and Smiling," 17:27–17:39)
• Fela’s decades-old lyrics resonate with perfectly with present injustices, blurring generational gaps.

4. Fela Kuti: The Living Reference Point (19:05–23:31)

• Protesters, musicians, and editors narrate how Fela's music animates and legitimizes protest across Nigeria.
  • "When government is going bad, he's the reference point. Anytime they protest, it's his music they play." (Fela Kuti, quoted by his daughter, 20:02)
• DJ Switch and Tammy McKinday recall hearing "Zombie" and "Beasts of No Nation," realizing that the problems Fela named remain:
  • "Everything he was saying, how many years ago is what we're still [dealing with]." (DJ Switch, 22:08)
• Protesters feel generations above them urging caution, but Fela’s voice alone seems to stand with today's youth.

5. The Lekki Toll Gate Massacre: Witness and Aftermath (23:31–35:09)

• October 20, 2020: Protesters barricade Lekki Toll Gate, a key Lagos artery.
  • DJ Switch is present, DJing, when security cameras are disabled and the lights suddenly go out.
  • "Those lights went off and just chaos." (Tammy, 24:52)
• Shooting begins. DJ Switch live-streams as soldiers open fire:
  • "They are shooting us. They are shooting us." (Protester, 26:45)
• DJ Switch recounts the trauma and chaos, witnessing people shot next to her, trying to tend to wounds live on camera:
  • "People were bleeding out. We just have to help." (DJ Switch, 31:04)
• Human Rights Watch investigates conflicting accounts, confirms deaths, but numbers remain uncertain.

6. Repression and Exile (35:09–37:36)

• DJ Switch flees into hiding after government officials deny the massacre and accuse her of fabricating footage. She loses her home, career, and sense of belonging:
  • "Everything I have worked for in my life, I lost it." (33:29)
• DJ Switch’s emotional aftermath, wrestling with the legacy and cost of activism:
  • "There are days that I say yes, and there are days that I say no... But more recently, I think I'd say yes, I'd do it again..." (36:37)

7. Grieving and Moving Forward (37:36–40:56)

• Obianuju attends a candlelight vigil for victims—her first true moment of mourning for her brother:
  • "It was an opportunity for me to accept that... he may never come back. For me to cry for losing my friend." (Obianuju, 39:03)
• Allowing open grief helps lift her from limbo, contrasting her family's years of denial.

8. The Aftermath: Loops, Reforms, Unchanged Reality (40:56–41:52)

• SARS is officially disbanded; promises of reform follow. But human rights abuses and new waves of protest in 2024 demonstrate little systemic change.
• Fela continues to serve as a reference point—even as his symbolism risks "flattening" the complexities of his life and movement.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Fela Kuti (quoted): "The secret of life is to have no fear." (00:27)
• Jad Abumrad: "History stubbornly repeating like that ostinato..." (04:42)
• Obianuju Iloaya: "He was my Superman." (06:24)
• DJ Switch: "I was almost certain I'm going to die here today. This is the end. Let me just document this..." (26:21)
• DJ Switch: "If I have any regrets in my life... it's that I don't know that boy. I don't know who he is. I don't know his name." (29:55)
• Tammy McKinday: "Even knowing that the dictator that [Fela] was talking about is the person who's actually our president—it's kind of scary." (22:01)
• Obianuju Iloaya: "At that point, it was an opportunity for me to accept that he may never come back. For me to cry for losing my friend." (39:03)
• Jad Abumrad: "A lot gets skipped over when you flatten a person into a symbol. A lot of messy stuff." (41:33)
• DJ Switch: "I don't feel like I've been left behind, but I feel like I've been left behind. It's not anybody's fault—of course, the world should move on." (35:37)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:36–05:37 — Introduction to episode themes: loops, time, and Nigeria’s history
• 05:42–12:45 — Obianuju Iloaya’s account of her brother and SARS’s crimes
• 12:45–19:05 — Birth of the 2020 EndSARS movement; Fela’s music as protest rallying cry
• 19:05–23:31 — Fela as generational reference point during protests
• 23:31–35:09 — The Lekki Toll Gate massacre, DJ Switch’s livestream and trauma
• 35:09–37:36 — Aftermath: DJ Switch in hiding, cost of activism
• 37:36–40:56 — Candlelight vigils; the personal power of grief and acknowledgment
• 40:56–41:52 — Official response, superficial reforms, continued cycles
• 41:52–End — Reflection on Fela’s symbolic legacy and the need to confront unfinished history

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Tone and Style

The episode is urgent, poetic, and immersive—fusing oral histories, lived trauma, and incisive storytelling. Jad’s narrative oscillates between the personal and the political, using music and lived soundscapes to deepen the resonance of each account. The language oscillates between the informal ("Oh, man, Jad. My brain is fried. I'm tired." — DJ Switch, 34:52) and the reflective, reverent, especially around Fela’s continued presence.

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Summary

"Endless Returns" is a moving, sometimes harrowing, exploration of generational struggle in Nigeria and the role of Fela Kuti’s music in resisting state violence and sparking hope. By threading together the stories of survivors, activists, and artists—most notably in the context of the 2020 EndSARS protests—the episode transposes the loops of Afrobeat onto the real, repeating cycles of repression and uprising in Nigerian life. For every step forward, the story shows, there is a risk of being pulled back—and yet, inspired by Fela, people keep stepping forward.

Transcript

[Protester]

They are shooting us. They are shooting us.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

And when we sang his songs at the protest, it motivated us, brothers and sisters. It was like he was speaking for us.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

The secret of life is to have no fear.

We all have to understand that.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Fela Kuti. Fear no man. I'm jad Abumrad. Chapter 11, Endless Repeats in this chapter, Fela himself won't really make an appearance because he is quite dead at this point. But also not because the story that you will hear, which I should mention contains some pretty intense moments of violence. He looms over it kind of like a ghost. Okay, so an idea that we keep coming up against in this series, all of us on this project, is this.

[DJ Switch]

Idea of a spiral. The spiral, the spiral in circle, circle, circle.

[Jad Abumrad]

That idea of cycles.

Loops.

What I mean is you listen to these Fela songs and you hear.

A groove that just repeats and repeats and repeats. First you're like, good groove. Then you're like, please change. And finally you give in. You fall into.

A trance where you let go of the urge for what you're hearing to be anything other than it is and you just lose time.

How long have I been listening to this? Five minutes, five hours. That's one of the pleasures of Fela's music, that third phase where you, where you are timeless. And yet there is something even as you're sort of free floating in a kind of temporal haze. There's something about the endless repeats of the music that.

Seem to capture how time actually works, which is sort of the darker resonance here. What I mean is that we in the west, where we like our three minute pop songs, we just kind of have this idea that.

Progress is a line that, I mean, inherent in that word is the idea that we are progressing towards some end, maybe justice, maybe a better world, who knows? And yes, we will hit the speed bumps along the way. So maybe the line flutters a little bit or turns into kind of like a sinusoidal wave. But it is always nonetheless a line continuing towards something. This is just part of the American religion that that is the shape of our journey through generational time. It is a lie. I would argue you can disagree with me on that. But in Nigeria it is so painfully clear that the shape time makes is actually a circle. The reminder of that is everywhere. For example, Nikkei Art Gallery, one of the most amazing places I have ever been in my life. Four floors of paintings, mostly paintings. In some of these paintings, the most eye popping blues you've ever seen. And when you get up close to the Paintings. You realize actually it's not paint. The blue is millions of microscopic beads that have been sewn directly onto the canvas. It's amazing. So I was there looking at one of these paintings up close, looking at the beads. When the power went out, as it often does, everything went dark. And the temperature started to go up as the heat rushed back into the room. But then the power came back on. I blinked, saw the room anew. And I noticed that next to this giant bead painting, there are a series of portraits of Nigeria's presidents arranged in a grid, Brady bunch style, chronologically, 1960 to the present. And it's a funny thing to see all the presidents lined up. What you notice is that the same names and faces keep appearing at different parts of the grid. 1979, there is a giant man named Alusiagong Obasanjo. Military uniform, military cap. 2007, there he is again, but this time he's wearing civilian clothes. 1983, there's a man named Muhammadu Buhari. Mustache, military uniform. 2015.

Buhari again. This time looking like. I don't know, it's like someone who does like it. The impression that you get looking at the grid is that these guys are trying to trick you. They're playing dress up to convince you that this time is not like the last time. But of course, it kind of is, because this is in fact, the same man Again and again, history stubbornly repeating like that ostinato. But they are not the only things that repeat. There's also right alongside them, the opposite energy, stubbornly repeating. Which brings us to Fela and the story that we're going to tell you. 27 years after Fela died, feeling betrayed that the youth of Lagos never rose up the way that he hoped. Suddenly they did. In his music, the weapon of the future, as he called it, was there, soundtracking the whole thing.

[DJ Switch]

So, Bianji, do you want to. Do you want to come this way? Okay. It's okay.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Let's start as a way of sort of setting the table with a story that we heard from a woman named Obianoju Iloaya.

[DJ Switch]

Yes.

[Tammy McKinday]

Okay.

[DJ Switch]

You can totally face that.

[Tammy McKinday]

Don't worry about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a story about a brother.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

So my brother Chijoke. A lot of people thought we were twins with the way we were always hanging out together. And it was fun. I mean, he's a boy and I'm a girl. And everybody's like, boys and girls don't hang out. But Chidioke didn't send. He was always with me, going out with me, hanging out with me. When he's going out with his friends, he said, I want my sister to come around.

[Jad Abumrad]

Obianuju says she worshiped her brother. Jijioki was a couple years older than her, and she would wear his clothes. They would go swimming together, get in fights with the neighborhood kids together.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

He wasn't scared, so I wasn't scared. He was my Superman.

[Jad Abumrad]

Fast forward a few years. It's 2012. She's 17, he's a few years older. He tells her he's going to go out to a party. Their parents were very strict. He wasn't allowed to go.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

So he's like, just cover for me. Put clothes on my bed, act like I'm home, keep going to my room and coming. And nobody would check.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he leaves. She goes in and out of his room all night, like he asked. But then at 9 o' clock, she gets a phone call.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

This person says, your brother has been arrested. Chijoike has been arrested. I could hear his voice.

[Jad Abumrad]

She said she could hear him yelling in the background.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

Telling me to tell daddy that he has been arrested. And to tell my dad. That kind of thing is very hard.

[Jad Abumrad]

She thought something really must be up. Mom goes down to the local police station and is informed that Jojoki is being held by a special police unit called sars.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

When my mom heard sars, she knew that there was a problem.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just to explain, SARS is an acronym.

[DJ Switch]

Which stands for the Special Anti Robbery Squad.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

Special Anti Robbery Squad.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sars S A, R S. This is a unit that was set up in 1985 to combat a wave of organized crime that was happening in Lagos. They were constructed as an elite unit, basically like the US version of a SWAT team. And they were given a lot of weapons and intentionally, very little oversight so they could move quickly. And by all accounts, robberies did go down. But then reports started to emerge that SARS agents who were supposed to stop robberies had become the robbers themselves.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Too many friends. I can't even begin to count their numbers.

[DJ Switch]

I mean, these guys will take you. Sars, I mean, will take you to the ATM machine, literally, and tell you to use up your limit for the day.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's activist Reno Odwalla and musician DJ Switch, both of whom figure largely in the story we're telling. They say it became just basically status quo for SARS agents to harass young people. Take their laptops, take their phones.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I mean, I think one of the.

[Tammy McKinday]

Most ridiculous cases we had was an.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Extortion of about $60,000 by the police from a young Nigerian.

[Jad Abumrad]

To put this in context, it is well understood in Lagos that the police in general are sort of over empowered and underpaid. So small scale extortion is not unusual. It's honestly how a lot of the police make ends meet. In fact, while we were in Lagos, one of our producers got stopped by a policeman at a checkpoint, had to pay a few dollars. We actually caught the interaction on tape. It was very cordial.

[Protester]

Good morning.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

Good morning.

[Jad Abumrad]

They rolled down their window. Policemen casually threatened them. She and her friend laughed, pretended to flirt, paid the money, and then went on their way.

Is he speaking Pidgin?

[DJ Switch]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Our field producer, Fei Fei says that happens to her a couple times a week. But the reports that started to emerge about the SARS agents went way beyond this.

[Enieti Eweng]

We've documented, along with groups like Amnesty, violence, extortion, extrajudicial killings.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Enieti Eweng.

[Enieti Eweng]

I'm a researcher in the Africa division at Human Rights Watch.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says Human Rights Watch. Amnesty began to hear about Sahra's abuses as far back as the 2010s. And in 2016, Amnesty released a report documenting at least 44 different cases of torture. They'd release a report a few years later upping that number to over 80. These are the stories that Obianu Drew and her family had heard.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

We knew the bad things that they did. We heard their stories.

[Jad Abumrad]

So when her brother Tijoki was taken, people in their community advised them to go to the main czar's agent and give him a bag full of 2 million naira, which is the equivalent of several thousand US dollars.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

Just offer him money. We didn't have the money. My parents didn't have that kind of money. So they sold the land. That was the land where my sister was buried. That was the only land that my dad had then. So we sold it to try and get TJK back. So we sold it, took it to the man in a bag. He said it was too small.

[Jad Abumrad]

They then wrote petitions, hired lawyers. Meanwhile, weeks went by, no signs of her brother, and she said her mother began to lose her grip on things.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

My dad, he would bring down the house with his screaming and his shouting.

[Jad Abumrad]

She became the de facto parent to her younger siblings. At one point, she says, about three months after Tjoka had disappeared, we heard.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

That there were dead bodies in a river.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some people told them that there were about a dozen bodies floating in a river not far from a SARS police station. One report we read put the number of bodies at 16. Another said it may have been as high as 50.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

So my dad was like, okay, so let's go see if we can find Chidjoke's body.

So we can at least have closure.

So he went there and he had to swim in the river, you know, turning the bodies and they were already getting bloated.

Mark on his chest. That was what my dad was looking out for because they were all bloated. Their face, you know, you can't actually recognize a lot of them. So he was just looking out for that mark. So we can just take him and he turned all of them. We are all waiting at the bridge thinking that he would just call us and say yes, shouts that he has found the bridge. We're like nothing. So we had to go home and hose him down.

[Jad Abumrad]

How are you handling this?

[Obianuju Iloaya]

I think that.

Everybody broke down. My mom was really down. She had to like start seeing a psychologist. So I had to, I needed to be strong for everybody. I had to also make sure that they keep on looking because I felt like one day Chiduke will be back and everything will be fine and he would hold me and maybe I can cry. So I kept on ensuring that they keep looking.

[Jad Abumrad]

So that was 2012. For the next eight years Obianu ju would be stuck in this limbo of looking for and not finding her brother. Meanwhile, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch would continue to release reports about abuses from the SARS police force. Fast forward to 2020. Fela Bration, the annual celebration of Fela had just ended in Lagos. And a few days after 23 year old Rinu Adwalla is hanging out at home. Renu leads a program called Connect Hub Ng which offers legal assistance and counseling to young people in Nigeria. She is very digitally savvy. Actually her nickname sometimes is Savvy Renu. But at that point she was just a student hanging out with her grandma, sitting on the couch.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I was at home, not because I wanted to be home. Remember you said I am a student, right? I was at home because then the association of the University Unions in Nigeria had gone on strike and so students had to be at home. And then it was right in the middle of the pandemic as well. So I was at home. I was going through my phone and I saw that video, a viral video.

[DJ Switch]

Showing an alleged killing of a young.

[Jad Abumrad]

Man in Delta State by the special anti robbery squad.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Also in the video where police officers were driving off in a young man's car. They had seized the car and then.

[Jad Abumrad]

They were driving off the video is shaky handheld. You see a car race off in the distance which is allegedly the SARS agents and then two other guys get in their car and chase after them. But the truth is there were several videos circulating at this moment. One where you see a policeman all in black dragging a guy out of a hotel.

Shooting in point blank.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

So shocking. And so this video went out online and for young Nigerian this became one time too many. I. I felt an obligation to do something.

[Jad Abumrad]

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[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I organized a protest with my friends, some of my friends.

[Jad Abumrad]

And they marched to the police headquarters in Lagos.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

We said we're not going to go there and protest and just go back home. We're going to be there for three days sleeping, you know, in the streets, on the street in the cold and not going back home.

[Jad Abumrad]

In videos you see Renu standing on her friend's shoulders making a speech. You see her arguing with police officers. You see her and the other protesters on the ground sleeping in sleeping bags and you see them dancing to music. I asked her what her family thought of her organizing this protest and she told me so.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I didn't tell them that I was going to protest ground.

[Jad Abumrad]

They didn't know about it.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I never told her because I knew that they would never let me. Our parents are not strangers to police brutality. They are not strangers to military violence. They don't want it happening to you. And that's part of what has led to some of our mental changes, especially as young Nigerians. Because your parents constantly told you.

Not to speak up, not to fight.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says that generational conflict, conversation kind of landed on her in a totally new way. The first day on the three day protest, they put on a fella song.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

Suffering and smiling, Soften and smiling. You Africans, please listen to me as Africans and you non Africans, listen to me with open mind.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

That was a song that I can't even forget, not even in my dreams.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

Suffer so far.

To be. That.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Fella sang this song 40 years ago, 50 years ago in that song, Fella said that every day, every day in the bus, every day in and at work.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

My people, my people, my people.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

I always suffer not smiling.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

49, seating 99 standing, packing themselves in.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

A bus that is supposed to contain like 50 people could contain like 100 people. And they don't speak up. They are suffering and smiling.

There's no water because the government is abandoned. Your responsibility of providing welfare to the citizens. There's no electricity in the 21st century. The most populous black nation on earth cannot boast of constant electricity.

[DJ Switch]

The police will slap them with them.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

But my people are still suffering and smiling.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says it just hit her. He was sending them a warning.

That if we just suffer and smile and retreat into hopelessness or distraction or religion, things are just going to go round and round and never change.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

You know, it's like telling people, wake up.

Because this is not what you deserve.

[Jad Abumrad]

Within three days of that first protest, the NSARS movement, as it came to be known, had exploded.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

People kept coming. People kept coming.

[DJ Switch]

It was growing by the thousand.

[Jad Abumrad]

DJ switch again. Protests against police brutality and government corruption are intensifying in Nigeria after days.

[DJ Switch]

I mean, across the country, on the.

[Enieti Eweng]

Mainland, in River State, in Port Harcourt.

[Jad Abumrad]

In Abuja, and Yeti Wang again from Human Rights Watch, just about every major.

[Enieti Eweng]

City in the country.

[Jad Abumrad]

You had all these protests happening all across Nigeria. And what you see or rather hear when you look at the footage is that Fellah was everywhere. Like when Yenni Fela's daughter in an earlier episode said he's the reference point.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

When government is going bad, he's the reference point. Anytime they protest, it's his music they play.

[Jad Abumrad]

When she said that, she was undoubtedly thinking about these protests where an entirely new generation of young people.

Brought Fela into the present. Or maybe he was always there.

Just waiting for them.

[DJ Switch]

I remember playing at one of the protests.

You know, was every socially conscious song from our. You know, our legend.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now DJ Switch. Just prior to the nsars protest movement kicking up, her career had been exploding.

[DJ Switch]

Oh, yeah, it was good. You know, it was good.

[Jad Abumrad]

She had just released a single. She'd been on tour.

[DJ Switch]

As a matter of fact, I had just flown in from a show in Dubai, literally when the plane had touched the ground. I remember putting out a tweet saying, where is the nearest protest?

[Jad Abumrad]

She ended up DJing at that protest and many others. And she says as she played music for the crowd, she thought back to her dad.

[DJ Switch]

Remember, my dad would have on his record. You know, either lady, if you call a woman African woman, expensive shit. Most notably.

Zombie for me, something that was probably released in 1976. So relevant that day.

[Tammy McKinday]

So I remember hearing Beast of Donation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just thinking, wow, that's Tammy McKinday.

[Tammy McKinday]

I'm the managing editor at the Native magazine.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she says what hit her when she heard Fellah's Beasts of no nations at the protest is that he wrote the song in 1986, and in it he calls out by name the head of state, Mohammed Dub Buhari.

This is 1986. In 2020, when the protests were happening, Buhari was back in power.

[Tammy McKinday]

And even knowing that the dictator that he was even talking about in that music is the person who's actually our president, it's kind of scary to think.

[DJ Switch]

That that's another thing that dawned on all of us. It's like, wait, exactly what he was saying, how many years ago is what we're still. So it was. It was. We were hearing, like, every single complaint, almost like from one generation to the next generation.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

When we sang his songs at the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Protest, that's Obianuju again, it motivated us.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

It was like he was speaking for us, advising us, supporting us, chanting with us.

[Jad Abumrad]

Obiansho told us that. And I found this interesting, that Nigeria, two thirds of the population is under the age of 25. And she says everybody that she knew that was over the age of 25 was saying to the protesters, don't do this. It's not going to end well. And she says it felt like Fela was the only one who was standing with them.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

We are young people. So it felt good to have this older person speaking for us, understanding how we feel and expressing it in ways that we cannot.

[Tammy McKinday]

It just kind of felt surreal because it was the first ever demonstration a lot of us had ever been in before. And it did feel like, wow, maybe there is going to be a change. Maybe they're going to hear our voices for the first time.

[Jad Abumrad]

October 20, 2020. The protests enter their 13th day in Lagos.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Earlier in the day, protesters had barricaded the Leki toll gate.

[Jad Abumrad]

Protesters had shut down the largest toll gate in lagos, which about 80,000 cars pass through a day. 810 lanes of traffic in both directions ground to a halt. This is where DJ Switch would end up and inadvertently become the face of the movement. She was there that night, October 20, DJing for thousands of people.

[DJ Switch]

I remember some young guy came and tapped me and said he wants to show me something. I said, okay. So I gave the mic to someone else and I jumped down and he showed me a picture he had just taken and he said, you see that man going? Look at what he just did. And so I looked at the picture. The man was uninstalling the CCTVs at that toll gate.

[Jad Abumrad]

The CCTV system was the closed circuit security cameras that were monitoring the whole area.

[DJ Switch]

My response to the guy was like, oh, maybe they think we might destroy it, right? I'm not knowing that. That was, that was just the beginning of our problem.

[Jad Abumrad]

A few moments later, the massive lights that keep Lecky Tolgate illuminated. Think of the very, very tall blinding white lights that you see at football stadiums. They're like those at 7pm Those lights.

[Tammy McKinday]

For the first time since I've ever lived in Lagos, I've lived in Lagos 25 years of my life. Those lights went off and just chaos.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

You scaled the sheer cliff face, battling frostbite, running low on oxygen.

[Jad Abumrad]

The wind pierced your skin and every inch was agony. You reached heights no ocean other human had before.

While getting nowhere at airport security. There's more to imagine when you listen. Discover best selling action titles on audible. This is Fela Kuti Fear no man. October 20, 2020 7:00pm the massive white lights over Lekki Tollgate go dark and just chaos.

[DJ Switch]

I just heard like gunfire. It just rang from the, from the back. And then I turned around.

And I see people running.

I saw, you know, I could see their boots, you know, Nigerian army.

I, I was, I was almost certain I'm going to die here today. This is the end. Let me just document this and, and I just pulled out my phone and Just live streaming.

[Protester]

They are shooting us. They are shooting us.

[Jad Abumrad]

On DJ Switch's live stream, which many people recorded from many different computers, the video is pitch black. You can't see anything except the occasional flashes of light from the gunfire.

Comments stream in from people watching, urging the protesters to run.

One person says, kneel, Kneel. Sing the national anthem.

[DJ Switch]

I saw, we started screaming, you know, raise your Nigerian flag.

[Jad Abumrad]

I hear this tape, and it's impossible for me not to think of Those women in 1947 who sang to create a force field around them.

[DJ Switch]

Because we've always believed that once we have our Nigerian flags and we raise it and wave it, they know that it's their citizens, right? And they're not going to harm us. It didn't matter.

They just been open fire on all of us. You know, Adanda person was shot that was literally lying on my back. I'm never going to forget that. I don't know.

[Jad Abumrad]

Tell me about that. What. What happened?

[DJ Switch]

You know.

When we laid on the floor, the boy, when he. When he laid on my body, right? He was literally screaming, cover her, cover her. I don't know if he was talking to me, but I was trying to even get him off my back because he was heavy, you know.

These guys come, they're screaming, they're shooting, and then this boy.

I turn on. This boy literally got shot on his lower back and was like lying on.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

My body.

[DJ Switch]

You know, I don't know the boy. I'm sorry, I'm just.

[Jad Abumrad]

You don't have to answer any of these questions, but I feel like I have to ask, what do you remember about him?

[DJ Switch]

That's it.

[Jad Abumrad]

The guy he was shot, was he a young guy?

[DJ Switch]

You know, I don't know. I don't know. I. If I have. I don't even know how to feel like if I have any regrets in my life. It's not even that I went to the protest. Yes, it changed my life. Like, it scattered my life. My life just got messed up after that. But I don't even regret that. I regret that I don't know that boy. I don't know who he. I don't know who he is. You know, I don't know his name, but I remember just trying to get him off at some point. He wasn't really moving, and he's bleeding. I'm looking at myself.

You know.

Around that moment, I. I got up and one of the soldiers that looked like he had authority, I mean, I walked up to him. I'm like, I said. I said, why Are you doing this?

[Protester]

We're protesting, and this is. This is our right to.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

I'm warning you for the last time.

[Protester]

You have to go home. Wildlife, Wildlife, ammunition.

[Jad Abumrad]

You have to go.

[Protester]

That's all I want to ask.

[Jad Abumrad]

You have to go home.

[DJ Switch]

I said, why are you doing this? Why are you using live rounds? Why are you shooting us? I was asking him. I didn't even know how to feel. I didn't know how to feel. I'm looking at the boy.

Another one was shot. I. I actually have. You know, I have these clips here. Another one was shot. And we were trying to. We were trying to. We literally were trying to do an operation on this boy.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

This is.

[DJ Switch]

If you can see this one.

[Protester]

Please.

We need to burn something. We need to burn metal.

[DJ Switch]

So I was asking. I was asking if at this point, at this point, we didn't really care anymore. You know, you want to kill us, fine. People were bleeding out. We just have to help.

[Protester]

If anybody can assist us. If you live close to Lucky Gates, please, if you can help, please be your brother's keeper. They need to remove this bullet from this boy's leg.

[Jad Abumrad]

The video that DJ Switch showed us, I mean, it's.

[Enieti Eweng]

It's chaotic. We could see blood. We could see a body part. They were trying to. To stop the bleeding. And they were saying, stay with us, stay with us.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anieti from Human Rights Watch was also watching it live. She would later travel to Lagos and interview hundreds of people who were at the scene. Protesters, witnesses, doctors at nearby hospitals who treated the injured to try and piece together what happened, because accounts varied wildly from zero. People were shot and killed. The whole thing was made up to hundreds.

[Enieti Eweng]

We had testimonies of the military. After shooting people, taking bodies away or taking lifeless bodies away, the military took away 11 lifeless bodies. But it still wasn't enough to tell us how many people actually died at the scene. We're able to identify the fact that the army came first to the scene. And that's what was the most documented abuse. Shooting, kettling people and shooting. They eventually left, and then the police came as well. The police from a police station not too far away from the Lekito gate came to the scene and also shot at protesters and took away two lifeless bodies.

[DJ Switch]

I will never understand how men and women with children from the same place, you know you're stealing from us. You know that the children.

The children of your fellow countryman or woman, you send the army to kill them. That's why I keep referring back to that song, Zombie. I Don't care what the order was. How can you walk up to young people and you end somebody's life? Look, I don't know.

I don't. And I will never understand it.

And since that day, since that day, that 20th, I didn't step foot into my home, my own house. I lost everything I have. Everything.

Everything I. I have worked for in my life, I lost it.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, DJ Switch said that just a few days after that live stream, she was contacted by Amnesty International with some information about possible threats to her life.

[DJ Switch]

And they smuggled me out of the country. They had to put me in a safe house. I was there for 11 months alone.

[Jad Abumrad]

Meanwhile, government officials began to claim that DJ Switch's footage was not real.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

In the fullness of time, this lady will be exposed for what she is. A fraud. The only massacre was in social media. There were neither bodies nor blood. Amnesty International, CNN and Ironaway, DJ and others like them should apologize for misleading the world by relying on possibly doctored social media videos.

[DJ Switch]

The government said that everything I did, everything I was showing them was on a green screen. A green screen. Anybody with half a brain knows that when you go live on Instagram, it's live right now. It's happening right now. And you say it's a green screen. You say, no, it's forged, because they don't even know how to lie. A convincing lie. Oh, man, Jad.

My brain is fried. I'm tired.

[Jad Abumrad]

We checked in with DJ Switch a few times over the last couple of years. She's still basically in hiding, living out of the country, not sure she can ever go back. And she doesn't really feel like she can make music anymore.

[DJ Switch]

Things are. Things are now different for me now. It's different. You know, I tried to do some recording with a friend who just happened to come to where I'm at, you know, And I realized that everything I was doing was taking me back there. I don't honestly know if I'm ready.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she says the movement that they started, that fella soundtracked, has gone quiet. And now she's just stuck in this room that isn't hers.

[DJ Switch]

I don't know if this would make any sense to you. I don't feel like I've been left behind, but I feel like I've been left behind. It's not anybody's fault. Of course, the world should move on. At the same time, you know, I sit sometimes. Nothing to do with. And I just feel, oh, crap, you know, like something as powerful as that. It's almost like.

It'S almost like it didn't get the response it deserves. You know what I mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

The last time that we checked in with DJ Switch, which was two years after our first conversation, I asked her, if you could.

If you could do this all over and know that the result is going to be the same.

Would you do it?

[DJ Switch]

Honestly? There are days that I say yes, and there are days that I say no. That's just the truth.

Days I say yes. You know, it's when I have that, although I don't want to use the term, but I don't know what other term to use, it's when I have that hope, you know, no matter how small, I have that hope. And I'm like, yeah, I'd be there.

And the days I say no.

I blew up my career. So in days like that, go like, you blew up your own career, you know, you blew up everything you've ever worked for. That's just the honest truth that I have. I have the yes days. I have the no days.

But more recently, I think I'd say yes, I'd do it again more recently.

[Jad Abumrad]

For Obiano Joo, who started our story, something did change, something important. She told us about a candlelight vigil that she attended just hours before the massacre.

[DJ Switch]

The pictures from this evening, the candlelight.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

Vigil held for those who have lost their lives.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thousands of people holding candles. Footage that you see online looks like a starry night.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

The candle lights, the candle lights that they had. He was like the one opportunity that was given to us as people who were survivors of sars, to.

Actually mourn our loved ones. And that was one time that I talked about chijoki. Like, talk about him, who he is, what he is to me and all.

I cried that night and I still cry whenever I remember it. But like I felt good.

[Jad Abumrad]

What changed in that moment?

[Obianuju Iloaya]

I got mourned.

In my house. You don't speak of chijoike in past tense.

It's always in present tense. But at that point, it was an opportunity for me to accept that.

[DJ Switch]

Yeah.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

He may never come back. For me to cry for losing my friend.

In my parents heart, they know that Chiduke may never come back. But we just had to keep up the charade.

[Rinu Adwalla (Savvy Renu)]

Right?

[Obianuju Iloaya]

So at that point, I had to let down my masks and just be.

Queen. The girl that lost her friend, her best friend. Yeah.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

My people.

My people.

My people.

My people.

We now have to carry our minds out of those garden places back into this musical contraption right opposite you.

Now we are back here after the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Lekki massacre, Muhammadu Buhari, who was then Nigeria's president, disbanded SARS and the National Executive Council directed state governments to investigate police abuse. And there was a judicial panel that released a white paper that promised reforms. But several years on, human rights groups report that police brutality is still rampant. In 2023, at least 15 Ansar's protesters were still in jail awaiting trial. Several reported being tortured while in detention. And in 2024, there was a fresh wave of protests against police brutality in Nigeria. Amnesty reports that Nigerian officers fired live ammunition again that this time left 24 people dead.

Meanwhile, Fela continues to hover over Nigeria and the world, but particularly Nigeria, as an idea, as much as anything. An idea of how to resist, how to fight back. And so he is claimed by an entire new generation of Afrobeats musicians. That's Afrobeats with an S. It's a musical genre that really sounds nothing like Fela's Afrobeat, but is named explicitly by them to create a lineage with him because he is the reference point. As his daughter Jenny says, he is an idea that hovers over everything. But a lot gets skipped over when you flatten a person into a symbol. A lot of messy stuff. In the next chapter, we're going to explore how Fela hovers over his family and his kids, who now have to move forward, trying to figure out what of him to take with them and what to leave behind.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

Everybody run, run, run.

Some people lost some bread Someone nearly died Someone jaw die Police they come.

Confusion everywhere.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's been a higher ground in Audible Original produced by Audible Higher Ground Audio, Western Sound and Talkhouse series was created and executive produced by me, Jad Abumrad, Ben Adair and Ian Wheeler. Written and hosted by yours truly. Higher Ground executive producers were Nick White, Mukta Mohan and Dan Fearman. Jen 11 was creative executive and Corinne Gilliard Fisher was executive producer. Executive producers for Audible were Anne Hepperman, Glenn Pogue and Nick d'. Angelo.

Our senior producer was Gofan Mutuile. Ruby Heron Walsh was lead producer and researcher. Our producers were Fefe Odudu and Oluakemi Aladdiusui. Ben Adair was our editor with editing help from Carla Murthy. Consulting producers were Bolu Babalola, Dotun Ayubade, Hanif Abdurraqib, Michael Veal, Moses Ochunu and Judith Byfield. Our fact checker was Jamila Wilkinson. Alex McInnis was the mix engineer. Also special thanks to Knitting Factory Records and BMG to the Kuti family. Yenni Femi Shayun and Maday to Melissa o' Donnell to Inside Projects and Maggie Taylor. And big thanks to Carla Murthy, Leah Friedman and Shoshana Scholar. The head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC and one more thing.

In this episode we had original music from artist Emeka Ogbe. He's someone I discovered while working on the series, really fell in love with his sound worlds. I reached out and he had actually been thinking about making a sound installation based on the events of the NSTARS movement. So we decided to collaborate and he created this piece of music for us called the Beasts in Us. I used a bit of it for scoring earlier in the episode, but I thought I'd play the full piece here.

[DJ Switch]

In Nigeria, despite video and pictorial evidence.

[Jad Abumrad]

The Nigerian army has denied opening fire.

[Obianuju Iloaya]

And killing peaceful Ansars protesters at the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Lekito Gate in the nation's commercial capital, Lagos. In a series of tweets the army posted various articles reported the shooting.

They.

[Fela Kuti (quoted)]

Claim soldiers were not at.

[Protester]

However.

Sam.

Sa.

[Jad Abumrad]

October 2020 the day that we live in your f.