Nigerian police late Saturday raided the New Shrine nightclub in Lagos founded by two of the children of the late Fela Kuti, Nigeria’s most reknowned musician, the Kuti family and police said Sunday.
“The stole money, they stole drinks and they broke instruments,” Fela’s daughter, the dancer Yeni Kuti told AFP.
“I can confirm that a raid took place,” Lagos state police spokesman Frank Mba told AFP.
“It started at 2300 (2200 GMT) and ended at around 0500 and 331 persons were arrested,” he said.
Mba said the club was suspected of being a “safe haven for criminals” who met there to plan their “nefarious activities.”
He said he had also received complaints from residents of the area about “Indian hemp (marijuana) and other kinds of illicit drugs” being consumed on the premises.
Mba said all of those arrested but found to have no link to any criminal activity were being released.
Yeni said the police broke down half of the door to the room where her musician brother Femi Kuti keeps his saxophones.
“When you see what they did there, it’s terrible,” she said.
Femi said he and his sister had been cleared of any involvement in robberies but were still at the police station trying to secure the release of more of the club’s patrons.
“People are telling us we should be careful — that they just want to victimize us,” Yeni said.
The New Shrine is a vast hangar decorated with fairy lights and Fela Kuti memorabilia.
Most of the regular Shrine patrons are boys and young men. The atmosphere is friendly and electric with Femi Kuti often playing non-stop for several hours, and the club is something of a Lagos institution.
The smell of marijuana there is so strong that visitors joke about it not being necessary to smoke oneself as “just breathing in is enough to get high”.
But the club has no reputation for hard drugs.
Fela Kuti himself, an outspoken critic of the then government, had several run-ins with the security forces. In the worst of several raids on his home, in 1977 his mother was thrown out of a window and died the following year from the injuries she sustained.
His son Femi is also extremely critical but tends to attack Nigeria’s political class as a whole rather than individuals.