Afrobeat singer and grandson of music icon Fela Kuti, Made Kuti, has fired back at ethnic bigots attacking his marriage to Inedoye Onyenso, an Igbo woman, describing such views as “slave mentality.”
Kuti, who tied the knot with Onyenso in November 2023 at a civil wedding ceremony in Lagos, has faced criticism from some social media users who accused him of “mixing blood” because of their different ethnic backgrounds.
Responding to a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), in which a user mocked him as “another foolish Yoruba man who married a useless osu Ibo woman,” Kuti said he felt pity rather than anger.
“When I saw this post, it didn’t make me angry, I just felt pity for this person,” he wrote on his official X account.
He went on to invoke the vision of Africa’s independence leaders, stressing that they fought for unity, not division.
“Every one of our great African leaders believed in the importance of African unity because they had faith in the potential of our people to rise intellectually above the structures and limits set by colonial regimes and miseducation,” Kuti noted.
According to him, ethnic prejudice only holds Africans back. “Running backwards and believing ethnic superiority/inferiority is justifiable is slave mentality.
“It means you haven’t fully freed yourself from your nearly 500-year-old chains. It means you’re still a victim,” he said.
The musician advised critics to seek knowledge through books and the works of visionaries like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Fela Kuti and Thomas Sankara.
“The healthiest way to free your mind is to read. Enlighten yourself with history and knowledge left by leaders… Free your mind,” he added.
Kuti explained that he chose to publicly address the issue because such divisive comments have persisted online.
“I thought to leave this here for posterity because I’ve been seeing posts like this (from both sides) for some time now,” he wrote.
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