By Abdussamad Ahmad Yusuf
It was Wednesday evening, and the clock was ticking to 6:00 pm. Alongside two friends, we were joined by another friend’s friend reminiscing my 44 days stay in Abuja, the Federal Capital — the longest I have stayed off Kano.
It’s a roadside discussion, and all topics have the freedom to cross our minds. So we present, discuss, argue and analyze. We sometimes even pass verdicts and judgments.
In Kano, it is Majalisar Bakin Titi, the roadside parley. It is a local gathering of men. In the local roadside parleys, unless in some exceptional circumstances, there is segregation of age, group, social and even economic status. While there is Majalisar Attajirai, the wealthy’s parley, there is that of the humbles, nobles to that of ‘Yan caca, the gamblers’. Men branched in the majalisa after work or after market hours in the evening. For the youth, joblessness and idle-mindedness have made their conversation almost an all-day affair.
It’s easy when you talk of youth or a range of bachelors, rest assured, women and girls have to find a way to dominate the discussions.
Habu would begin showing the girl in blue that her Atampa cost six thousand, the bag two, her veil eight hundred; putting everything she wore averagely kept at Fifteen thousand. She was of humble background and not suitable to be “settled with”, he concluded. Marrying her means you have to struggle all your life to satisfy your needs and hers’ and expect nothing from her side or her parents. Is it crass materialism or the new normal? Anyway, it’s a roadside parley, not an academic or intellectual forum.
Until the beginning of the 1990s, marriage is contracted on the mutual friendship between two families of the intending couples, for settling disputes, generally to stiff bonds or forge new ones. Therefore, the material benefit does not count as much, even at the community, not a familial level, where crowd-achievement due to communal lifestyle is more prevalent than the individualist materialism in prevalence today.
This permeation of a materialistic viewpoint of life has degraded the standard of familial life seen manifest in roadside discussions, more unfortunately, stemming from the Manyan Gobe, leaders of tomorrow who are nurturing an ignorant standpoint for the nucleus of society: the family.
The Habu thesis painted above shows the complexity of young man’s ‘misthinking’ wealth, status and rank for fancy and expensive dress and accoutrements. Sadly, it has reduced young girls of marriageable ages to racing for material possessions; an iPhone – the latest in the market, expensive ‘Vatik’ Atampa, posh shoes for kece raini, ‘being above equals’.
These are the ‘yan mata Roadside Discussions extolled to the high heaven, and about-to-marry young men internalize as the best description of a woman to seek her marriage. It is no longer about the Ladabi (obedience, and I am not being apologetic to the ‘alpha’ men), kunya (modesty and good manner), hankali (sobriety), mutumci (humanity toward others) and Karamci (generosity), in addition to what zamani, current dynamic brings; industriousness, economic dexterity, education (in the western sense or the karatun boko) and may be tech-friendliness.
The Roadside parleys are a hub to discuss which girl has the curviest hip, who has a bosom chest and who walks beguiling, and identifying who has Girman kai, ego in the community. The one egoistic, closely when interrogated, one would discover she is the one who is not trading her teeth for beautiful smiles at any of these near-jobless men, what they will turn out to brand Rashin kamun kai, not modest. The best of the times, if any, is one that discusses, often prejudicial perspectives, who is mutuniyar kirki, a good girl and who is not.
Many girls dodge passing by roadsides parley to skip their topic brought up unsolicited and to evade the roadside social appraisals and analyses of their lives.
What I will not close, however, without telling you; beautiful marriages have been tied from Roadside Discussions, even though, one may argue equally, many have been dissolved thanks to Roadside Discussions. But, the paradox notwithstanding should not deter young men and women from being the best they can be so that the best comes their way.
Abdussamad wrote in from Kano and can be reached at Abdussamadahmad69@gmail.com