New Delhi, June 1 -- When in 1976 teenager Yunusa Yau and his friends grew tired of Nigerian soldiers' high-handedness in their school, they turned to a satirical song - "Zombie," by Fela Kuti, the title track of his album released that year.

By then, the military had been in power for a decade, following a coup. A brutal civil war killed at least three million people, rocking the fledgling democracy of the resource-rich nation after independence from Britain in 1960.

The military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo, had sent soldiers to high schools across the country to enforce discipline, a measure of how successive juntas ruled the country. Fela was constantly sparring with the authorities, through open-air sessions of searing commentary at hi...