“Fela No Dey Give Receipt For Payment o” – Fela To Me As Great Ife Students’ Union President In 1990, By Adeola Soetan

Na real Abami Eda Fela be.  A man who talks about himself,  Fela, in third person singular pronoun/sentences is a weird enigma that can’t be compared with anybody, living or dead. Fela is Fela 

After much wahala to raise funds to get Fela to play for us during our students’union week tagged “Abami Nite” through Prof. Wole Soyinka, another enigma and Fela’s cousin, we finally got Fela and Fela agreed that Fela would play for us, as if there was another Fela. Quite Laughable you say.  Don’t let me bore you with other details.That will come later  in my forthcoming book by popular demand to set the record straight on our days at Great Ife NANS activism and students – workers movement generally.

Now let’s talk about the conversation between Fela and myself who he tagged & yabbed as Obasanjo because of my moustache although  our conversation after payment of the artiste fee of Fela to Fela. “See im moustache like Obasanjo’s own, that’s why you know get commonsense at all” . Fela & his yabbis na 5&6. With Fela, nobody gets commonsense because everything must be done according to his set down rules. No compromise!

The conversation:

Me: Fela, please we want receipt for the payment.

Fela: Sebi you give me money? 

Me: Yes 

Fela: Sey, I say I no collect your money?

Me: No.

Fela: So, why you dey ask me for receipt when I didn’t say I no collect your money?  You don be African man, so why you wan collect receipts?

Me: We want receipt for our records and for accountability. Fela,  we can’t go back to our fellow  students  and say we pay Fela but we don’t have  receipt to back it up on how much we pay you. (By this time I was getting upset because “mi o gbo iru e ri” I never heard such thing before o. But we were too excited to have Fela on our campus)

Fela: Why should your fellow students trust you because of receipt? Then, dem dey craze if they have a leader they can’t trust except with paper receipts. Fela no dey give receipt for payment o. See im moustache like Obasanjo’s own .That’s why you no get commonsense for asking me for receipt when I don’t deny say I collect money from you…”  Case closed!

We can’t even collect our money back even if we insist because na for our kokokoro eyes Fela gave out the money –  N20, 000 cash  balance to his boys to share instantly. I think the total artiste fee we paid Fela was N27, 000 Twenty Seven Thousand Naira as students concession sha. Luckily our Fin Sec , Toyin Saibu aka In Cash. Rip  , an SU who was always covering her nose during my conversation with Fela was a witness. She was uncomfortable throughout our return journey to campus. She always liked to ask for receipt too much, now she had met Fela Abami Eda who doesn’t give receipt. Another world! 

 “Mr. President, what do we do now that we don’t have receipt to show….? . I was just laughing & laughing. I like to laugh very much to easy tension. It’s good for all.

Fela is not just music, he’s a movement, a complete life of many parts. He’s a composite book of knowledge that nobody can ever finish reading.

May be if Seun had just yabbed Wizkid’s fans & Wizkid “as people wey no get commonsense” like how Fela would have described them in his usual way, if alive, and then ignored their noise.  May be, those rude guys won’t ever have the nightmares of comparing Fela with anyone.

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