Fela Anikulapo-Kuti challenged the forces of repression and corruption in governance in the state of Nigeria.
My association and friendship with the maverick was very cordial. I was treated like a son, friend, adviser and comrade by the Afrobeat legend. I was a travelling companion, sharing the great ideology of Pan-Africanism on some of the trips across the West African coast. Between 1974 and 1993, I designed 26 album covers for his music career.
Fela had just experienced his first beating and incarceration by the police and this gruesome experience inspired the hit song Alagbon Close whose cover was the first I designed. The final design of Alagbon Close’s cover showed Fela’s ‘Kalakuta Republic in the background standing solidly on the left and Alagbon Close jail house on the right, a broken chain leading from the walls of the jail, half of which is still attached to Fela’s left wrist as he dances triumphantly over a capsizing police patrol boat and is helped, in effect, by a prodigious whale.
The next two album covers for No Bread and Kalakuta Show followed the tone of Fela’s vitriolic statements on vinyl. No Bread was an elaborate oil painting portraying a mélange of social ills plaguing a developing nation.
This cover took the best of two weeks and a trip to ‘cloud nine* to achieve. Fela had insisted I try out a concoction of Igbo (marijuana) to ‘elevate’ my talent. Not wanting to let my great friend down, I tried the herb and the resultant effect was superb, but being a teetotaler, I learned to be myself and thereafter tune into the right frequency. 
Kalakuta Show is another oil painting, this time illustrating the arrogant sacking of the ‘Republic’ in another Fela-versus-Police drama, featuring a portrait of Fela with the smoking Kalakuta Republic in the background, while Fela, his aides and his radical lawyer are hotly pursued by a baton-wielding policeman! I designed the Yellow Fever cover in 1976.
The song is an admonition to African women who are fond of using bleaching creams to lighten their dark skin tone. Fela had expressed disgust at the belief that skin-lightening enhances African beauty. I showcased a typical ‘offending cream in the top-left corner of my cover art.
I painted in the price tag of 40 naira which was at the high end for a cream and so harmful to the beauty and the psyche of African women. Fela reacted very positively when I submitted this cover for his approval. 
In 1976, the then military Government in Nigeria had instructed soldiers to horsewhip erring drivers on the highway. The soldiers carried out this order without impunity and with a fervor reminiscent of zombies. That was why Fela came up with the idea to compose ‘Zombie’. Everyone, including some military personnel from the nearby Albati Barracks, fell in love with the catchy rhythm and martial tempo, which galvanized the dancers, who wouldn’t let the song end. The song became an anthem of protest for people, which was chanted under their breath anytime they felt oppressed by military personnel.
When the time came to create the cover art for this landmark song, I selected ten military images, and a few of Fela. I was set on making a graphic collage. I laid a cardboard matte on my drawing board and edited ten shots down to four. I was feeling like a shaman, and as I put them down, the pictures just dropped into a position reminiscent of an Ifa divination… subconsciously! Not wanting to take any chances, I fixed the pictures down with masking tape, then traced their position in pencil.
I overlapped the photos and cut and pasted them down. Then using a hard paintbrush and thick poster colour paint, I wrote, in freehand, the album title, Fela’s name and his band directly over the picture, outlining the result with a Rotring pen. The sleeve was an instant hit around the world. Beasts Of No Nation (B.O.N.N.) was Fela’s attack on his jailers for an eighteen-month undeserved incarceration from a trumped-up currency trafficking charge. Fela’s voice rages.
I had to depict the evils of South African apartheid, and the failures and hypocrisy of the United Nations. I made the delegates look like rats, and I portrayed the oppressors with animal’s horns and fangs, the slavering vampires of Margaret Thatcher, P.W. Botha, Ronald Reagan and President Mobutu Sese Seko cram the frame. Among my beasts are Generals Mohammed Buhari and Babatunde Idiagbon, the men responsible for Fela’s 1984 jail stint. The images of Beasts of No Nation seethe with primal urges-greed, control, vengeance-and the spirit of defiance.
Fela took advantage of the sweet and seductive power of those things that are looked upon as taboo and he invited Nigeria to the debate, and I stand behind him to this day.
A Dynasty Of Album Cover Art—By Lemi Ghariokwu
