Happy Birthday, Seun Kuti
It is a matter of basic histology
that a body cannot thrive
while its own white blood cells
are being manufactured
in a laboratory in Brussels
and shipped back in dry ice
at a three-hundred percent markup.
Seun stands at the podium
like a frustrated surgeon
who has realized
that the patient’s veins
are full of imported syrup
labeled “Progress,”
while the local insulin—
the raw,
unfiltered capacity
to actually build a tractor—
is being exported
as a crude byproduct
to be refined
by people who find
the sun offensive.
He argues,
with a dry,
percussive logic,
that a nation
is only as sovereign
as its ability
to digest its own history
without waiting
for a fork
designed in Paris
to tell it
how the yam should taste.
He views the “Global Market”
not as a trade fair,
but as a Symbiotic Parasitism,
a system where
the African mitochondria
produce all the ATP,
only for the energy
to be harvested
to power a neon sign
in London
that says “Help the Poor.”
There is a clinical exhaustion
in his voice
when he speaks
of the “Consumerist Fever”—
the way we rush
to the pharmacy
of the West
to buy a cure
for a headache
caused by the very wig
we are wearing
to look “Professional.”
He is the Immunological Memory
of the compound,
reminding the cells
that they used to know
how to fight
without a subscription
to a foreign defense manual.
He wants a Productive Synthesis,
a localized photosynthesis
where the Raffia tree
doesn’t just provide shade
for a man
scrolling through a Silicon Valley app,
but becomes the literal
fiber of the data,
a network
grown from the soil
upward,
rather than
parachuted from the clouds
downward.
And so,
on this anniversary
of his own
biological debut,
we celebrate
the man
who refuses
to be a “Patient.”
He remains
the sharp,
surgical scalpel
cutting through
the fatty tissue
of the “Developmental Aid”
to find the muscle
that still remembers
how to work
without
an external
battery pack.
Majekodunmi O. Ebhohon is a Nigerian poet and playwright. He is the author of ‘The Great Delusion’, winner of the ANA Prize for Drama, 2025. He writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.🇳🇬_
_+234 (0) 9139208624_
_sankara101010@gmail.com_
