Kuti’s criticism of the festival wasn’t his only offence. He had declared his compound a republic (‘Kalakuta’) and announced that he would run for president. Most dangerous of all, he was attracting the attention of the city’s restive young population. A thousand soldiers stormed Kalakuta, stole the money from his latest record deal, beat up his followers, sexually assaulted some of the women in his band and threw his elderly mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a well-known anti-colonial campaigner,
