Jad Abumrad

So each of them had a reason.

And as they spoke about him, they acknowledged some of the excess.

But they also spoke about him with incredible fondness.

And that was complicated.

It was complicated to hear that.

That he did things that I think we would all condemn him.

And yet the feeling I had leaving was that he was partially – he was an abuser at times but also a liberator in a weird way.

You have to kind of understand him as being both at once.

That's certainly the picture that they painted.

Yeah, it was sort of the... If you imagine Woodstock, but thinking of it as a cultural festival focused on the sort of diaspora.

Nigeria at that point was flush in oil money and they wanted to sort of come out as the center of the black world.

And so they invited...

Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Audre Lorde, all of these different cultural icons from every different discipline to come to gather in Lagos for an extended cultural festival.

And it's one of the most amazing gatherings, and it's really hard to summarize because it was so many things at once.

It was beautiful and joyful.

It was also kind of a sham.

There was a ton of fraud.

And it's run by a dictator for, you know, I think what some would say the wrong reasons.

Yeah, he had a nine-point list that he presented to the committee.

I think the committee brought him on because they really couldn't not have him on it.