The 1990s in Nigeria were years of deep political tension and cultural vitality. Under successive military governments, most notably those of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, the nation grappled with economic decline, political repression, and tight control over the press. Yet amid the fear and uncertainty, Lagos pulsed with creative defiance. Musicians, playwrights, and journalists transformed their crafts into instruments of resistance and survival.
It was within this climate that P.M. News, a Lagos-based evening newspaper, emerged in 1994. Founded by Bayo Onanuga, Dapo Olorunyomi, and Kunle Ajibade under the Independent Communications Network Limited (ICNL), the paper became a symbol of Nigeria’s underground press. Known for its “guerrilla journalism,” P.M. News operated from shifting secret locations to avoid raids by soldiers, embodying the courage of an independent media fighting to keep truth alive.
Its pages chronicled not only political repression but also the lives and struggles of artists like Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Wole Soyinka, two figures who, through music and literature, personified cultural resistance to tyranny.
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Fela Kuti: The Sound of Defiance
By the 1990s, Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat, had long become Nigeria’s loudest voice of protest. His fusion of jazz, funk, and Yoruba rhythms carried a political edge sharper than any editorial. Through songs like Zombie, Coffin for Head of State, and Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense, Fela condemned corruption, hypocrisy, and military brutality.
His Kalakuta Republic commune in Lagos, part home, part recording studio, became a symbol of self-governance and resistance. It was repeatedly attacked by security forces, most infamously in 1977, when soldiers destroyed the compound and his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, sustained fatal injuries.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Fela clashed with state broadcasters and copyright offices over the control and payment of his music. According to P.M. News (October 2017), he once protested by withdrawing permission for state-owned radio stations to air his songs, citing unpaid royalties and artistic exploitation. Though this was not an official nationwide “ban,” it underscored his lifelong insistence on artistic autonomy and integrity.
For Fela, sound was political speech. Every performance, every refusal, was an act of defiance against a system that sought to silence him.
Wole Soyinka and the Symbolism of Radio
Long before the 1990s, Wole Soyinka had already proven that words could be weapons. In October 1965, during the Western Region election crisis, the young playwright entered the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) studio in Ibadan and replaced a pre-recorded government propaganda tape with his own message calling for electoral fairness. The event became legendary as the “radio station incident,” a daring gesture that linked art with direct political intervention.
In a P.M. News interview decades later (July 2024), Soyinka clarified:
> “I never broke into a radio station, but sneaked in. The radio station was holding on to something that belonged to the people.”
For Soyinka, radio represented the contested space between truth and power, between state propaganda and the people’s right to information. His 1965 action became an enduring symbol for later generations of journalists and artists resisting censorship during military rule.
Intersections of Music, Media, and Dissent
Although no verifiable record exists of a P.M. News headline reading “Fela Blasts Soyinka’s Radio,” the idea captures a symbolic truth. Both Fela and Soyinka fought over control of voice, who speaks, who listens, and who owns the medium of expression.
Fela’s protest over radio airplay echoed Soyinka’s struggle decades earlier: both were battles over who gets to define the public narrative. If Soyinka’s “radio” represented reclaiming public speech from state manipulation, Fela’s dispute over airplay represented reclaiming creative ownership from state institutions that commodified or silenced dissenting art.
Through rhythm and rhetoric, both men declared that creativity itself was a form of resistance. And through P.M. News and other independent outlets, their stories reached Nigerians hungry for truth amid military censorship.
The Press as Arena of Resistance
At the height of Abacha’s regime, P.M. News became more than a tabloid, it became a lifeline for those seeking uncensored information. Its founders endured arrests, detentions, and confiscations. Dapo Olorunyomi was detained; Bayo Onanuga went into hiding. Yet the paper continued to publish, its resilience earning it credibility as one of the few voices Nigerians could trust.
Within this fragile ecosystem, coverage of figures like Fela and Soyinka carried political weight. A report on a musician’s protest or a playwright’s statement was not entertainment, it was subversion. Each headline, each quote, was a small act of rebellion against silence.
The P.M. News model would later shape the tone of Nigeria’s post-1999 democratic press, influencing the birth of investigative and digital journalism in the 2000s.
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Legacy and Reflection
Looking back, the convergence of media, music, and dissent in the 1990s offers more than nostalgia, it reveals the continuity of Nigeria’s creative resistance. The questions Fela and Soyinka raised remain urgent today:
Who owns the means of expression? Who controls the narrative? Who speaks for the people?
Fela’s call for self-determination in art continues to resonate in the modern African music industry’s battles over royalties, streaming rights, and censorship. Soyinka’s insistence on freedom of speech remains a moral compass for journalists and activists confronting state pressure in both traditional and digital spaces.
And P.M. News, though born in a time of danger, stands as part of a lineage that widened Nigeria’s public sphere and made dissent audible.
The mythical headline, “Fela Blasts Soyinka’s Radio”, may never have appeared in print. But as metaphor, it captures a profound truth: that in Nigeria, the struggle for freedom has always been fought not only with protests and politics, but with sound, word, and print.
Through their different mediums, Fela, Soyinka, and the independent press together defined an era when resistance itself became art, and art, resistance.
Author’s Note
This article revisits the political and cultural ferment of 1990s Nigeria through the intertwined legacies of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Wole Soyinka, and the independent press, especially P.M. News. While the headline linking Fela and Soyinka remains symbolic, the convergence of music, media, and intellectual activism reveals how creativity became a powerful tool of defiance under military rule.
References:
1. “Soyinka at 85: Flashback on how he invaded Ibadan Radio Station,” P.M. News, 15 July 2019.
2. “I didn’t break into radio station in 1965, I sneaked in – Soyinka,” P.M. News, 16 July 2024.
3. “Fela: Time for Posthumous National Award,” P.M. News, 19 October 2017.
4. Wikipedia: P.M. News (accessed 2025).
5. Medianigeria.com, “What You Need to Know About P.M. News Newspaper.”
