According to Seun Kuti, his father, the late Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, did not forbid his wives from having extramarital affairs.
He went on to say that this was one of Fela’s worst mistakes, claiming that some of the ladies eventually contracted HIV from their other lovers and gave it to the late singer.
In a recent Instagram livestream, Kuti stated that he was the victim and refuted rumours that Fela was the one who infected his girlfriends.
He said, “Fela made many mistakes. One of the mistakes he made -one day, I saw a video of a lady online saying why are people praising Fela’s legacy despite him giving women HIV and dying of AIDS.
“I said, ‘Oh, Fela you see yourself?’ If Fela was a traditional man, he would still be alive. I will tell you something about him that you might not have known, Fela’s women all had other men.
“Fela did not keep his women to himself. He believed that as he is free to sleep with all the women, the women are also free to meet other men. His law was that they shouldn’t bring the men to his house.
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“My father doesn’t leave his house to sleep with other women outside, so it was his women who brought HIV home to him. Nobody is perfect. Everybody make mistakes. But Fela is a man that is on the side of humanity.”
Fela made headlines when he married 27 women in a single traditional ceremony on February 20, 1978, in Lagos.
In August 2025, Made Kuti explained why his grandfather, the Afrobeat pioneer, died in poverty.
Speaking in a recent episode of the Tea With Tay podcast hosted by actor Taymesan, Kuti explained that Fela made a lot of money during his lifetime but died broke because he was excessively generous.
“He was broke. Fela died poor… He had the kind of money that could have bought a whole street, but when he comes back from a show in Kalakuta, he will open a box of money and say anyone who needs it should take it. Anybody from the street could walk into Fela’s house. It was an open house policy, anybody could walk in and walk out at any time,” he said.
“His children were not allowed to call him ‘dad’ or ‘father’ because he didn’t want any preferential treatment for them. Everybody was equal in Kalakuta.”
Made Kuti also claimed that “during Fela’s lifetime, he was appreciated more internationally than he was locally.”
Fela died on August 2, 1997, at the age of 58.
