down. I am the kind of person that can endure a lot of pain. So, I didn’t make noise while in labour. I kept quiet. Because I wasn’t shouting, I was there from 9 pm till 9 am. I gave birth at 9 am, and they gave me a caesarian section after I had been in pain for 12 hours. This was a private hospital. The nurse did not attend to me. When I was in pain, I was crawling to the bathroom. She would just say, ‘Eeya! Pele! Sorry!’ "She didn’t call the doctor. She even said the doctor was sleeping – a doctor that was on call. It was until my mother called the son of the owner of the hospital that the doctor rushed in. My baby was breached. But she had not checked me. The doctor was furious,” Yeni recalled. She compared her experience with her daughter’s own in the UK, which she was privileged to witness at an NHS-run facility, and urged governments in Africa to improve on this current situation. “When I saw how hers went, I remembered my own experience, and I thought, ‘we have a long way to go.’
The mortality rate is so high here. You will go to a hospital, and you’d see dead mothers wheeled out of the wards. The child would survive, but the mother would have died. In England, if you are going to die, it is your time. In Nigeria, whether it is your time or not, you would go. I thought, ‘When are we going to be like this in Africa?’. The only thing I can do is to go on ‘Your View’ and talk about it. We need to change the narrative in Africa,” she said, with pain etched on her eyebrows. Yeni, who retired as a dancer after performing with her father's band, Egypt 80 and later with younger brother, Femi Kuti's Positive Force is happy that the dance profession is getting its due recognition now unlike her days. “It wasn’t easy. People say ‘dancer’ with derogatory tones. I just love to be proud of who I was and what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t let anybody judge me. As long as I am not begging anyone for money and I am making my own money and earning my respect. We (myself and my sister) just weathered the storm. I
am happy to see that dance has become a recognised profession in Nigeria. I look at myself as one of the forerunners and flag bearers of dance. With due respect, I mustn’t forget Tessy. She died last year, she was quite big in her time. She danced for Shina Peters, and she was an inspiration to me as well. "I am still dancing. I can still move, and I can still shake if I want to. I wouldn’t dance on stage anymore because the other girls are much younger than I am, and there is no way I can have that same energy. All the pains I told you about are there. Also, there is a time in your life where you make way for the younger people to take up the mantle. What I can do is to do a few dances here and there but not professionally,” Apart from the art of dancing, one thing that has given her a sense of joy is her family. For Yeni, family bond is everything. It is this love for family that has enabled her play the enormous role of Fela's first child with so much ease.
In many African families, it is usual for the female child to take the back seat, while the male run the show but not the Kutis. She commands the respect of the other children of the late Afrobeat king. In her words “That doesn’t happen in my family. All members of the family give me that respect as the eldest. I think it happened naturally. Starting from Femi, who gave me the respect that is due, the rest just followed. I am there for all of them. They can call me. Sometimes, we quarrel, but they give me that respect. And when it comes to the inheritance, I don’t cheat them. Everyone takes equal share. I won’t say because I am the most senior, then I should take the lion’s share. No, I don’t do that,”. Still discussing family, she revealed why her daughter did not tow the music or arty profession line like others. “First and foremost, when my daughter (Rolari) was growing up, I was broke. I couldn’t afford piano lessons for her. I would have really loved her to learn the piano, 7