Many people think this song talks about the traffic and congestion of the Lagos roads but it's meaning lies in the symbolic, retardation and devolution of the people by the government.
Go slow is the systematic slowing down a populace and reduction of their potential by making the simplest things difficult for them,
Ensuring that you have no choice but to go slow
It involves using English, Statistics and the devaluation of currency to make sure that the citizens do not evolve past elementary level thinking and never measure up to what is considered to be a man in developed and sane society.
It stems from colonialist and slavish mentality where caste is determinant and placed on simple thing as basic amenities, food and job opportunities. Anything to ensure you can never be man enough or man completely.
Fela made use of hyperbolic symbolism to describe what could be described as the curse eternal to be Nigerian.
He starts with Man must be man for him land o
you must all agree with me
When you look around the Nigerian man you see infant, beggars, thieves and swindlers, playing the clown, and chicken boy for the sake of attention money, and women, eating and bloating themselves drinking gluttonous like school children no sense of self or esteem,
running around in slippers and some don't even care to take care of themselves, defeated by the country, they have no choice but to go slow.
If they are like this in their father land, is it then abroad where racism is rife, that they will become great. A man without self respect in his own land can never hope to get it anywhere else.
When Go Slow catch you for your house o le make e niyen
Bemused, he goes on to do a rap version of all the big English that is said by politicians in a form of farce
starting with
oyibo oyibo of course how you make it you cannot make it... (even adding grunts, phlegm, onomatopoeias that symbolizes all the excuses government will cough out just to ensure they don't provide you with the simplest amenities)
50 year later no Nigeria musician has surmounted his genius and frankly no one ever will.
The part that get people confused is when he goes.
helicopter dey fly fly fro your top
molue dey for your front
You self don dey for jail
Hee doesn't mean the literal go slow which is traffic but these vehicle symbolized the sum of principalities and hindrances that a black man face to tup it all you are still in a prison.
A powerful song, a prophecy, or a curse? it asks if Nigeria ever break her chains
You can download the lyrics online. However, now that you understand, Listen again