What Seun Kuti Doesn’t Know About Prayer -By Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi

When people dabble in subject matters that are beyond them, they’re bound to betray ignorance and contradict themselves along the way. So it is with Seun, the youngest son of the legendary Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti. Despite admitting never to have prayed in his life, Seun Kuti dismissed the same as ineffectual and childish. “I don’t believe prayer works,” he categorically said. Pray, who repudiates the efficacy of what they have never practiced? Man’s pontification would have been convincing if he spoke out of personal attestation.

In one breath, the Afrobeat musician and activist admitted not knowing how to pray, yet in another, ridiculed those who pray as being showy and theatrical with it. Prayer is integral to human existence and quotidian life. Worship and prayers go hand in glove. Poured libations and incarnations chanted by traditionalists are prayers. The commitment made by public officials during their inauguration is encapsulated in prayer. The National Pledge that citizens recite is a prayer. Perhaps, instances like the last two are what fuel the notion that prayer is ineffective. Seun specifically justified his repudiation of prayer by recalling his release from incarceration while prayerful inmates to whom freedom was prophesied continued languishing in the same jail.

This doesn’t change the fact that his arguments in the now-viral video are a muddle. For instance, what a false equivalence for him to equate the Christian’s lifestyle and actions with prayer! His words, “Your life is the prayer. What you do with your life is the only prayer. Your act, your action, is prayer.” On the face of it, people don’t use the life they lead to seek the face of God (which is essentially what prayer is about). Rather than a means of supplication to the Almighty, virtuous living is more suited for soul winning, where the believer’s lifestyle becomes the Bible for unbelievers.

We can only agree with Seun’s lifestyle-prayer corollary in the context of “faith it till you get it.” This is where believers move beyond praying into living out their expectations until they materialise. But, you can be sure that this dimension is beyond our man. For him to dismiss how people pray as an eye service, what derogatory term won’t he deploy on faithful who call the things that be not as though they were? If alive in Abrahamic days, could Seun have suffered Abram, who, despite nary a child, lived like the father of multitudes that God christened him?

Mercifully, the gaping holes in Kuti’s opinion are a cautionary tale that should mitigate whatever demoralising effect his submission could have on the faithful. Being an online thought leader doesn’t make the person a knowledge expert. Given how impressionable the footage revealed his interlocutor and persons in the studio to be, let’s hope the social media influencer doesn’t influence people’s disposition towards prayer. Should that happen, imminent testimonies may be in jeopardy!

Although he also cited the other faith and its cleric, the musician seemed more fixated on Christians with his mimicry of speaking in tongues. He only needs to be told about Hannah to see that what he’s deriding is not a melodrama. 1 Samuel 1:13-14 (AMPC), “Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved but her voice was not heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. Eli said to her, How long will you be intoxicated? Put wine away from you.”

Hey! If a high priest of Eli’s caliber couldn’t recognise an intense prayer, how do you expect Seun Kuti to? The only difference is that the former didn’t doubt but validated Hannah’s prayer upon being better informed. This was as Eli assured the supplicant, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.” (1 Samuel 1:17). And boy, did the Lord speedily grant the barren woman’s request expeditiously! Prayer works. The problem, as Leonard Ravenhill pointed out in his book, ‘Why Revival Tarries’, is that “we have left agonizing and gone into organizing.” The Lord doesn’t reward showmanship!

Seun continued, “The concept of God that people have is even why prayer is completely null and void. If you claim that God has written down what is going to happen. From beginning to end, He has his plan. His will must be done. If your prayer does not align with the will of this your God, then the prayer will not be answered.” We must laud his deep understanding here. Of a truth, God doesn’t respond to man; it’s the other way round. Pandering to the wishes of earthlings would diminish His Sovereignty and Supremacy. We are talking about the God who knows the end from the beginning and has everything sorted out. To this end, the Afrobeat star is spot on with the above statement.

He, however, contradicted himself by not knowing that the prayer mannerisms he lampooned are typical of how the Holy Spirit leads the faithful in prayers. Why are we introducing Him into this discourse? The Holy Spirit is a member of the God-head who helps Christians to pray in line with the Father’s will. Romans 8:26-27 (AMP), “In the same way the Spirit [comes to us and] helps us in our weakness. We do not know what prayer to offer or how to offer it as we should, but the Spirit Himself [knows our need and at the right time] intercedes on our behalf with sighs and groanings too deep for words. And He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes [before God] on behalf of God’s people in accordance with God’s will.”

What an intoxicating yet relieving experience this is! No highness compares to a person filled with the Holy Spirit. Seun should try it sometimes. Oh, I just remembered it’s the exclusive privilege of saints. Brother Seun can enjoy this supernatural excitement by believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and then publicly confess Christ as his Lord and personal saviour. That’s when the Holy Spirit can take over his life and, in short order, lead him into some gymnastics in the place of prayer. Not to worry, the celebrity wouldn’t be the first non-conformist to relish what they initially rubbished.

VIS Ugochukwu, a sage, poet and essayist, can be reached on X via @sylvesugwuanyi