Abdalla Uba Adamu

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

His name was Sadik. Perhaps about 11 years old. He walked into my newly allocated office in the old Mass Communications building of Bayero University Kano (Nigeria) in 2013. I was startled. He was a tiny boy with deep dark skin, a beautiful face with intense eyes and a dolphin smile. He asked if I wanted to buy Fura (steamed millet balls blended in cow milk, often used as dessert, although it could stand on its own as a nutritious meal). He did not look like any of the usual urchins who thronged the corridors of the building look for odd jobs – run errands, empty trash, sweep office when those officially charged – and paid – to do so did not. Intrigued, I ordered one. He disappeared and returned some twenty minutes later with the Fura in a transparent plastic bag. I paid him, and that was that.

He returned the following day. When I declined to buy it because I didn’t feel like drinking the Fura, he insisted I buy it for others. When I asked why, he simply retorted that I appeared richer than other staff because, first, I was a professor, and second my office was larger. I was amused by his evaluation of my finances based on my position. And true, my office was the largest for staff, but I was a new bride in the Department – having been wedded to Mass Communication after an amicable transfer from the Department of Science and Technology (thus the ‘double’ professor tag), and all stops were pulled to make me welcome. Based on his logic of having a larger office, if not a deeper pocket, I bought about ten and asked him to distribute them to colleagues.

Sadik was to become a regular fixture in the corridor. Always after 2.00 p.m. One day he came with a blue checkered school uniform. Mentally, I thanked the boy who gave him the ‘hand me down’. The uniform was from Musa Iliyasu College, located along Gwarzo Road, a few kilometres from the New Campus of Bayero University Kano. This was a private and prestigious high school in Kano, attended by the children of the well-to-do.

I was told, however, that the uniform was his own and that he was indeed a student at the famous prestigious college. Curious about the human aspect of this development, I decided to delve further. What I found was what I want to share with you regarding the world of Hausa women.

Sadik did not come from an elite home. He was from a large Fulani family living in a ruga (a Fulani cattle encampment) near Janguza Army Barracks in Kano – itself a few kilometres from Bayero University Kano, New Campus, along Gwarzo freeway. The unit was a father, three wives and eighteen children. Sadik was the eldest in his mother’s room. They were herders. Indeed, Sadik was born near Tamburawa along Zaria Road in Kano when the family was on the move in 2002. They camped near Janguza Barracks, where they located their ‘hometree’.

The mother was the one selling the Fura at Bayero University Kano New Campus that Sadiq marketed. She had a ‘stand’ near the Faculty of Engineering. She had a lot of customers in all categories of the university community. After all, even professors love Fura. Her interaction with the university community enabled her to develop an interest in education, and she wanted to get Sadiq to attend a school and eventually a university. She did not want Sadik to follow the family herd. His father, however, wanted the child to join the family herding tradition. The mother then engaged one of her customers, a professor, to drive to the ruga and convince the father to allow the child to attend school, to which he reluctantly agreed. The mother then took over the process of educating the child.

She enrolled him in a local private primary school inside the Janguza Barracks. After he finished, she inquired which was the best high school around, and Musa Iliyasu came highly recommended. She enrolled him there. An exclusive private school. Paid for from the proceeds of her Fura business. She bought a bike for Sadik to make it easy for him to attend the school, some five kilometres from their tent. His legs could barely reach the pedals, but he was enthusiastic about learning. After school, he would go to her Fura stand, park the bike and then trample all over the BUK mega building advertising his mother’s Fura (even boldly entering the Vice-Chancellor’s office to market the Fura), all the way till 6.00 p.m. when they close ‘office’.

I interacted with Sadik for three years. He was so curious, bold, confident and always lifting books on my desk, trying to read them, asking endless questions, his eyes always darting and roving all other office. He was truly an inquisitive and intelligent child.

In 2016 I temporarily relocated my place of work to Abuja, and that was the last I saw of Sadiq. I did not fully return to Bayero University till 2022. In the intervening period, I had wistfully thought of Sadik and finally decided to find out what had happened to him when I returned. It was a massive success story of doggedness by a traditional woman.

When Sadik finished Musa Iliyasu College, he told his mother he wanted to be a pilot. She asked him to find out how much it would cost. Off he went to the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, where he learned the fees could be as much as ₦7.5 million. He informed his mother, who immediately asked him to continue the process of getting admitted. She would pay the entire sum – after all, she was already a millionaire with the large herd she had. She earmarked the number of cows to sell to raise the pilot school fees. Sadik did the entrance exams but did not scale the final test. So, he was not admitted.

He then applied to BUK with his JAMB score of 201 for Computer Science but did not meet the Post-UTME requirements for the program. Again, he faced rejection. His mother initiated the process of getting him alternative university admission and was advised to take him to Al-Qalam University, a non-profit Islamic university in Katsina. He went there and inquired about the admission process and the fees. With his results, he was admitted. His mother sold two of her cows for ₦450,000 and gave him the money to pay for the school fees in Computer Science and his accommodation in Katsina. He enrolled and started his program.

When he relocated to Katsina, she sent him money every day. She eventually gave him ₦200,000, with which he started a Fura packaging business, employing his co-tenants in the house he was renting. Soon, he established a small business employing other students. Eventually, he vied for and succeeded in becoming the Vice-President of the Computer Science Students Association of the Al-Qalam branch.

Sadik became a dedicated student with a consistently high CGPA, which could eventually lead to either a good second upper or a first in Computer Science. He was eventually elected the President of the Computer Science Students of his university chapter. One day, the officers of the Association came to Kano for a function during a school break and decided to see his house, especially after he told them he lived in a ruga. They were astonished to discover he was telling the truth – their respect for his modesty raised higher.

In January 2023, I was in my office at the Faculty of Communication BUK when someone walked in. I was bent on my laptop but did notice the guest removing his shoes and coming and standing in front of my desk, waiting for a pause in my typing.

I looked up at a tall well-built young man. I immediately knew it was Sadik. At 21 years, everything about him has changed, of course, but not his dolphin smile. He told me he learnt I was asking of him and decided to come and greet me. I was so happy to see him, and it was he who related to me what I had written so far. I immediately connected him to Sunusi Ahmad Baffa Dawakin Tofa, Chairman of the Kano State chapter of the Fulfulde Development Association of Nigeria (FULDAN), of which I was a patron. They promised to come together and see how Sadik could be part of community mobilisation awareness and a role model, especially for youth. Sadiq owes his success so far to his mother.

***

Sadik’s mother, Hajiya Hauwa Suleiman Dikko, was not an educated, entitled, privileged woman. She did not go to school. Her class was the hard knock of life. As a young girl, she missed going to school with lunchboxes and rucksacks festooned with stickers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Spiderman, Hulk, X-Men, and Fantastic Four. She did not attend a privileged landscaped school with paintings of Micky Mouse and Donald Duck on their walls. She had no driver to chauffer her to school in an airconditioned SUV. No TV to return to after school hours in a nice airconditioned living room. No iPads to play with. No Netflix to relax her hard stressful day. No extra lesson teacher (Uncle John or Auntie Funmi) to ensure she passed those horrible subjects such as Mathematics.

Her contemporaries who lived such life finished successfully from their expensive private schools (of course, no private school would allow mass failure, especially from children of the privileged) and had gatekeepers to ensure they got admission into the juiciest disciplines in the university of their choice. If at all in Nigeria – otherwise, it would be off to Ukraine (before it became too hot), some obscure countries in Eastern Europe, India, Cyprus, the UK or preferably, Malaysia.

When such contemporaries returned, they had cushy jobs waiting for them and a relatively easy path to the top. Eventually, they are celebrated as women of substance – given awards (which they don’t need) and celebrated in academic papers and opinion pieces as role models of female achievement and doggedness in a patriarchal society. I don’t mind their high-profile visibility. I just believe the accolades are wrongly placed, or at the very least, the Point of View (POV) should sweep around.

My female heroes? Those I will be celebrating today, the 2023 International Women’s Day? Let’s start with Sadik’s mother. And hundreds of others like her. I am sure you know one or two in your locality. They are women, often widowed, left alone, with little or no inheritance, and who, with the little they have, were able to provide much-appreciated services in their communities and keep a tight hold on their families. They don’t engage in endless and fruitless debates about gender identity or reproductive rights nor women’s representation in political representation and their share of hegemony. Rhetoric. Talking loud and saying nothing. As my main Man sang, “Like a dull knife / Just ain’t cutting / Just talking loud / Then saying nothing”. (James Brown, 1970).

Mainly, restauranteurs, these local women build people and impact their communities. With their business – restaurant (ƙosai, koko, tuwo, ɗanwake, wake da shinkafa, alkubus, gurasa, ƙashin rago, etc.), public transport (Keke NAPEP, buses, Acaba/Okada, Ƙurƙura), estate (properties, rental apartments, plots of land) – they are the role models who should be celebrated. They don’t feel entitled and are privileged in the peace of mind they have and the mentoring they do in their communities. They have no PAs, SAs, fierce dogs at the gates of their solar-powered villas and mansions, no frowning ‘maigad’ to intimidate and scare away panhandlers.

They have no SUVs as the cost of one could serve as capital for a whole year for their business. They don’t even have cars, despite some owning a transport business or so. They do not take their holidays in London or Dubai – they have no time for holidays as they are busy serving their communities. They marry off their daughters, not in grand style, with furniture imported from IKEA in China but from local makers – thus contributing to local economies.

So, what should be the concerns of women on International Women’s Day? For me, with a focus on Muslim Hausa women living in traditional communities, how about integrating them into the modern sector digital economy? Instead of empty rhetoric about gender representation, why don’t we focus on enabling them to acquire skills such as mobile phone repairs and POS services – in the comfort and safety of their homes? Many women are now engaged with mobile phones and online trading and payments. Muslim Hausa women feel unsafe in approaching service centres where clusters of men provide these services. Empowering them to be skilled in digital knowledge in the lungu and saƙo (alleyways) of our communities works better than hot-air rhetoric and genuinely can make a difference.

On this day, I, therefore, award accolades to Sadik’s mother, Hajiya Mai Ƙashin Rago Fagge (with a whole street named after her), and countless others whom I am sure Jaafar Jaafar knows more. They are truly women of substance.

Today, being International Women’s Day, please locate any in your community, go right up to her and appreciate her. Celebrate her achievements and her silent but visible impact in the community as the REAL woman of substance.

PS: Some have asked about Sadik’s whereabouts. He is in his final year at Al-Qalam, Katsina, Computer Science, and from his results so far, he is heading towards either a First Class or a very good Second Upper.

Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu can be contacted via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

I was rummaging through my travel pictures when I came across a picture that I am sure has not been published anywhere. I saw it in a glass case at a ‘corridor museum’ at Universität Hamburg, Germany, on 2nd December 2008. I was excited because of its rarity. It was the picture that I am sure has not seen the light of day almost anywhere. I had vaguely heard about the man from my father, a writer, but did not pay attention then. Now he was there, smiling in all glory and right before me. I decided I would take the picture to show it to my father.

Edit: The man was Muhammad Ƙoƙi, the son of Alhaji Mahmud Ƙoƙi, the Kano Malam. His picture triggered my excitement about his father, Malam Mahmudu Ƙoƙi.

Malam Mahmudu was perhaps one of the most unsung and unknown critical literary figures in Hausa history. You can Google all you can. You won’t find him or his picture. Instead, you will be taken to Neil Skinner’s book, “Alhaji Mahmudu Ƙoƙi: Kano Malam” (ABU Press, 1977). I very much doubt if ABU Press itself has a copy. My copy is in excellent condition (except for a slightly scratched cover) since it was printed on shiny bond paper – and can therefore scan very well. I hesitate to do this for fear of copyright violation. I do wish ABU Press would consider retrieving a copy somewhere and reprinting it.

On return from Hamburg, I started looking for the book – and I was lucky to grab a copy at then ₦550 in January 2009. Now, some 14 years later, you can get a second-hand copy from the online store Abe Books for just $99 (cheap at ₦74,000 in 2023). At the moment, I don’t have any ‘kebura’ around me (since the ASUU strike was suspended!). Otherwise, I would offer mine for ₦50,000 for my copy!

Quite simply, it is a brilliant slice of Hausa history. Most significantly, it detailed the fieldwork done in the collection of data for Bargery’s Hausa Dictionary, whose full title is “A Hausa-English dictionary and English-Hausa vocabulary”.

Although mainly attributed to Rev. George Percy Bargery (1876-1966), an English missionary and linguist, the dictionary had significant input from Diedrich Hermann Westermann (1875-1956), a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. The dictionary was published in 1934. The printed copy used to be available at ABU Bookshop, where a colleague of mine gifted me one he bought at the huge sum of ₦2,000 in ancient days, almost breaking his bank account!

The book was written/edited by Neil Skinner (1921-2015) at the request of Bargery’s son, Kenneth, to collect recollections of the elder Bargery while in northern Nigeria. Alhaji Mahmudu Ƙoƙi (1894–1976) was Bargery’s Chief Assistant in the preparation of the Dictionary and was the first choice to ask in 1967. As Skinner recollected, “I began recording some of his memories of Bargery. Listening to his vivid accounts of Kano in the first of the century, I formed the idea of putting together from Mahmudu’s lips some account of his own life.”

And what a fascinating life it was. Skinner continued, “As a son of the largest city of northern Nigeria, who had been born into the civil war of Aliyu and Tukur, M. Mahmudu saw the coming of the British, knew Waziri Giɗaɗo and Resident Temple, lived to see the end of the British rule and the Nigerian Civil War and, above all, had close contact with rulers and innovators, both Nigerian and British. He, therefore, seemed likely to have a tale worth recording for younger generation of Nigerians and those with an interest in Nigeria as it was and is. Mahmudu was a spectator of many great events and participant in not a few.”

And what a whirlwind tour of northern Nigeria it was in the early 20th century. Reading the book is like going back in a time machine. Everything was covered: economy, society, governance, culture, everything. As Neil Skinner stated, the book was told by Mahmudu himself – Skinner just edited it. It contained both fascinating and often disturbing details of days gone by. For me, for instance, I was traumatized by his account of the slave trade in Kano. As Mahmudu recalled,

“I used to see slaves being sold – with my own eyes! At Ƴan Bai, on the west of the [Kurmi] market. That was where they used to line them up and sit them down, with their feet sticking out, like this. Then it would be, ‘You there! Get up!’ And he would get up, and we would look him over well from top to bottom and say, ‘Walk a little!’ then he would do so until we told him to come back. He would do so, and we would say, ‘Right, go and sit down’ and put hand to pocket and take out a little money, perhaps a score of cowries or fifteen and give them to him. You would do this, whether you bought him or not. Then, if he saw someone selling groundnuts, he would call her over to get some saying he had been given the price for getting up to be inspected. That is how we have a proverb which says, ‘Tashi in gan ka ma na da ladanta’.”

Based on this disturbing account – in the heart of Africa – I wonder how many of our other proverbs have such creepy and dark origins? If you go to Ƴan Bai in Kurmi market in Kano, now you will only see mats, books and assorted goods.

Alhaji Mahmudu Ƙoƙi provides a rich tapestry of ethnographic details about how the Dictionary was compiled and the fact that the team of Bargery and his assistants insisted on seeing actual objects and their names before recording them. One wished they had an artist with them to sketch out many of the cultural artefacts that have all but disappeared now. It is good that the Bargery dictionary has been digitized and is available free online, thanks to the efforts of Hirokazu Nakamura of the Faculty of Human Science, Department of Human Sciences, Bunkyo University, Japan.

“Alhaji Mahmudu Ƙoƙi: Kano Malam” is comparable to “Baba of Karo” by Mary F Smith (wife of M.G. Smith, author of “Government in Kano, 1350 to 1950” amongst others, and which is available FREE online!). Published in 1954, “Baba of Kano” is an anthropological record of the Hausa people, partly compiled from an oral account given by Baba (1877-1951), the daughter of a Hausa farmer and a Koranic teacher. Baba’s reports were translated by Smith.

Books like these encourage us to seek out our own cultural history – visit those places mentioned, savour their historical aroma and note them as centres of excellence in discovering our past. By the way, Ƙoƙi is a ward in the city of Kano and right on the edge of the Kurmi market. If you are from the area, perhaps you may have heard of Alhaji Mahmudu from his grandchildren.

Don’t forget; this is not a review of the book but a memory jog on the old man, Alhaji Mahmudu Ƙoƙi, whose picture was honoured at a foreign university.

There is a composite collage of the picture I snapped in the Hamburg university museum of the son, the book and the father! as the latter appeared in the book.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

Hausa Intangible Heritage Revival – Overture to the Symphony

When Gillian Belben, the British Council’s new Director in 2004, wanted to introduce a truly unique project in enhancing the cultural relations between Britain and Nigeria, a series of initiatives were proposed. One of them was Connecting Futures – a project that linked youth in Britain and Nigeria through music, films, debates, social advocacy and the arts.

I was involved in the film and music projects. In the music domain, we wanted to create a music ensemble that would revolutionize traditional Hausa music – an endangered performing art. The reason for its endangerment was its griot-based nature. Traditional Hausa musicians were seen basically as praise singers – singing the praises of rich, famous, infamous patrons who pay them a lot of money. The changing Hausa society in the 21st century saw the disappearance of such griot musicians – as no one had the money (or the gullibility) to pay to hear their praises, except politicians – thus making such performances short-lived and, fundamentally, non-artistic. I was the Chairman of the defunct Center for Hausa Cultural Studies, based in Kano. The Center and the British Council liaised to develop a project to create a sustainable focus for Hausa traditional performing arts, at least for as long as the Connecting Futures project lasted. There was no government input in this – we did not seek any, nor do we expect any, despite the existence of the History and Culture Bureau (HCB) in Kano.

Gillian and I were interested in contemporary European music of multiple-instrument ensembles and decided to recreate an ensemble of Hausa musicians playing different instruments. This was unheard of in Hausa ethnomusicology since, traditionally, Hausa griot musicians tended to stick to only one instrument (stringed or percussion). However, with the advent of ‘modernity’ in traditional performing arts, some Hausa club musicians started combining string instruments (kukuma mainly) with percussion – drums and calabashes. Examples include Garba Supa and Hassan Wayam. For more on this, see Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje’s brilliant Fiddling in West Africa.

We were not interested in modern synthesizer music with its sampled sequencers of sounds that modern Hausa ‘nanaye’ singers arrange to form melodies and then transposed lyrics over the beat, often with female autotuned voices – all mimicking Indian film soundtrack singers. This production mode earned their genre the name of ‘nanaye’ – girlish (not female, incidentally!) music.

In our project, we envisaged four different instruments working in harmony to produce at least an acceptable ‘post-modernist’ Hausa traditional griot music – without the praise singing. We sent out notices requesting expressions of interest from interested musicians, mainly griot. Many ‘nanaye’ singers came, and we turned them away – we wanted musicians, not singers –none of the nanaye singers could play any traditional instrument. Auditions were held with those who can play a specific traditional instrument, and we first chose three: sarewa (flute), kukuma (fiddle), and kalangu (drums). Because there were many varieties of drums, we added duman girke ‘conga’ drums. All were to be played by males, as was traditional in Hausa traditional performing arts. That was when Gillian decided to up the ante by insisting on a female musician join the four young men.

This was a tall order for many reasons. Hausa women are not accustomed to playing musical instruments, especially in public. There were, of course, exceptions. The late Hajiya Sa’adatu Barmani Choge and Hajiya Uwaliya Mai Amada both had ‘calabash orchestras’ and performed in public. You can find further readings on her life and performance at the end of this. Currently, in 2022, Choge’s children and former bandmates have continued the tradition of performing in public – mainly at weddings and naming ceremonies. They used to perform during political campaigns, but the bad publicity and accusations of improper behaviours put paid to that.

Both Uwaliya and Barmani were in advanced age and could get away with pretty much everything. Getting a young Muslim Hausa woman to join young males and perform in public was genuinely challenging. However, Gillian was determined to do it, so we focused on the instrument the female band member could play. The only viable one was shantu – an aerophone. This was a female musical instrument, which, together with the bambaro (mouth harp), has all but disappeared.

Eventually, we found Fati Ladan, a lady living in Kano but originally from Niger State, who was one of the ƙoroso dancers attached to the History and Culture Bureau (HCB), Kano. The HCB already have a shantu ensemble, made up of much older women who perform during opening ceremonies at government events – adding a bit of classic flavour to the settings before the long speeches start.

Fati could not play the shantu herself but was willing to learn, especially from the existing shantu ensemble at the HCB. She eventually became adept at it. In the next stage of our project, we added her to the earlier group of four male musicians and called the group Arewa. But since the fronts man of the band was Nasiru Garba Supa, the son of the legendary kukuma player, Alhaji Garba Supa, we later referred to the band as Nasiru Garba Supa and Arewa. You can watch Fati’s solo performance, which I recorded and edited in 2014 in Kano, at https://bit.ly/3DF1Hfk.

The shantu, a percussion tube used by Hausa women, found its way to North Africa due to the trade in enslaved women (for more, see Ames and King, Mercedes). The Kanuri ganga (double-headed cylindrical drum) and the Hausa and Songhai instruments of the same name are North African borrowings from West Africa. An extremely large variant of the shantu, called languru (sharing a name with a language learning and dictionary app) and also referred to as shantu, is played by male Fulɓe.

Interestingly, the languru is similar to the alphorn, a wind instrument that is a national symbol of Switzerland. It has been used by Alpine farmers for hundreds of years as a form of communication in mountainous regions, although now it is simply a musical instrument. During the 18th centuries it was regarded as a beggar’s horn, since it was most often played by impoverished shepherds in the cities, obviously using smaller versions. The Fulɓe languru is also a wind instrument and played during festivities in gatherings of the Fulbe in the evenings after the cattle has been squared away either in corrals or designated areas. The smaller shantu used by women is a tubular shell of a long, narrow gourd, open at both ends; often decorated with patterns burned on, or cut into, the outside shell. It is held in the right hand and beaten in a variety of ways by the seated player, including the following:

• Stamped with its lower end against the inside of the right thigh, or against the calf of the right leg.
• Stamped with its upper end against the open palm of the left hand
• Tapped with its outer shell against the shin bone of the right leg
• Tapped with the lip of its lower end against the ground
• Tapped on its outer shell with rings on the fingers of the right or left hand
• Used singly or with one or more other shantuna in the statement of zambo (innuendo), as in waƙar kishiya (song of co-wife), karin magana (proverbial sayings), etc., through the imitation of speech tone and quantity; used solo or with one or more other shantuna in the accompaniment of song
• Used by women for social comment (e.g., by a co-wife in criticism of her partners) or for informal music-making.

Nasiru Garba Supa’s Arewa and Fati performed many concerts for the British Council over a period of two years, generating a lot of interest and accolades due to Fati’s often solo slot given during any performance. Since the concerts were family affairs – involving the whole family to attend – many young people were fascinated by Fati’s shantu playing.

Gender Rebellion and Shantu music – The QAC Troupe in Historical Perspective

Generally restricted mainly to elderly women playing it to amuse themselves, the shantu was made a choice of musical performance in all-female secondary schools in northern Nigeria in the 1970s. For the most part, they performed during school activities – graduation, cultural days, national events, etc. Once the students graduate from the secondary schools, they simply retire the shantu to what would pass for attic. However, perhaps remembered by people in their sixties, the prominence of shantu as an instrument in public performance was catapulted into legitimate public entertainment in the early 1980s by students of Queen Amina College (QAC), located in Kakuri, Kaduna, northern Nigeria, especially the 1984 graduating class. They were encouraged to use it as part of the then cultural revival in secondary schools. The main reason for their popularity was rehearsed perfection. Perhaps not surprisingly, they were more frequently featured on NTA Kaduna cultural variety shows.

However, soon enough they started drawing criticisms due to their increasingly bold, and what was seen as anti-cultural, performances. Perhaps carried away by their popularity, they became more experimental in their choreography. One of the performances on their setlist was Gantsare Gaye. Accompanied by the deep bass-like hollow sound of about 10 shantus, the dancers energetically move their derrières in an obscene movement of sexualized dance routine (mainly referred to as ‘gwatso’/thrust). Although the 1980s was a liberal decade (and almost twenty years before Sharia was launched in Islamicate northern Nigeria), the sight of teen girls performing such obscene dance routines on public Television drew critical reaction and condemnation in newspapers and from Muslim clerics in Kaduna and Kano. The QAC girls were undaunted, however, knowing fully well that they had the full protection of their powerful parents, the girls themselves eventually marrying into equally powerful influential homes, with quite a few of them becoming powerful themselves. QAC was an elitist school and thus created a cultural disjuncture in the performance of the girls. Interestingly, it evolved from a Catholic missionary educational tradition – thus giving multiple readings to the girls’ performances. The college was established as the Queen of Apostles College Kaduna by Catholic Missionaries in 1940, becoming Queen Amina College when it was taken over by the Kaduna State government in 1970s following government takeover of missionary schools.

Their defining creative moment was at the International Market for Film and Television Programmes, organized by the Nigerian Television Authority, held at Durbar Hotel, Kaduna, from 27th to 31st March 1983 (NTA IMPT ’83). Part of the festival included performances by various artists – and the QAC girls were requested to perform on stage for 15 minutes. Their troupe consisted of 22 performers – 12 call-and-response vocalists and dancers, and 10 shantu players who also called the chorus. There were no percussion instruments, with the bass sound of the shantu being sufficient enough.

Through trawling various Facebook postings, I have been able to identify some of the performers – now all grandmothers and in their mid-50s! They included Fatima Umar Wali, Halima Waziri Digma, Maryam Tinau, Maryam Adamu, Hauwa Suleiman, Aishatu B Musa, Rabi Tinau, Binta Tukur, Binta I Kaita, Fatima Musa, Fatima Usman, Mairo Mu’azu, Amina Musa, Zuwaira Abubakar, and of course, others, actually mentioned in some of the verses.

Their setlist for that festival was made up of five songs, plus intro and outro skits. The main songs were Karyamaye, QAC, Alhaji Lawal Kalabayye, Ko da Rabo, Gantsare Gaye. The song structure of their performance did not fall into the classic intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus and bridge, associated with modern, basically English songs. They adopted the framework of chorus, verse, chorus – in a call-and-response pattern, typical of traditional songs in northern Nigeria. The chorus was also the song’s hook. Only one song had an opening doxology of one line (Karyamaye). Sleuthing on Facebook comments about the uploaded videos of the performances reveal that Alhaji Lawal Kalabayye was named after their food contractor! He apparently did a good job to warrant having a whole song devoted to him!

The opening song of the performance, after a few seconds of the intro skit, was their masterpiece: Karyamaye (a made-up word to provide vocal harmony). This was an invective song targeted at their public culture critics. The first (and actually, the main) verse is transcribed below:

To bismillah, jama’are, Arrahmani/People, we start in the name of Allah

Mu ƴan Hausa, da mu ƴan Shantu/We, the Hausa and Shantu club

Da ba ruwan mu da kowa/ Those who are not bothered

Ba ruwan mu da kowa/We are not bothered

Sai dai a gan mu a bar mu/See us, and leave us alone

Sai ko hararar  nesa/Your dirty looks only at distance

A cikin duniyar nan, Wallahi/ In this world, by Allah

Muna da masoya, kana muna da maƙiya/We have fans and we have haters

An ƙi jinin mu, kamar a sa mana kananzir/They hate us, wishing to pour kerosene on us

A ƙyatta ashana a jefa/And lit [the fire to burn us]

Ba’a san mu kamar a kashe mu/The haters want to see dead

Ga rijiya a saka mu /Or throw us in deep wells

Ko a samu warin gwano/Or make us stink like black stink-ant

Daga hange sai leƙe sai ko harar nesa/Watching afar, hating with dirty looks

Wataran sai labari/It’d be all over one day

…       

Ku san mai san ku/ Kana kusan mai ƙin ku/Know your fans/ Know your haters

Koda dare ko rana/ koda cikin ƙabari ne/Night or day, even in the grave

Koda ruwa ko iska/ koda cikin duhu ne/Through storms, even in the deepest darkness

Karyamaye, with full booming sound of 10 shantuna (pl.) with outside air energetically sucked down the aerophone provided a perfect percussion to their voices, and really demonstrated the power of the shantu in well-skilled hands. It is this rehearsed, almost flawless perfection that stood them better than other girl troupes in their immediate vicinity (e.g., Kurmin Mashi girls shantu troupe, also in Kaduna). Their verse was full of insouciance, defiance and pride in their art and identity; for instance:

Mu ƴan Hausa, da mu ƴan shantu/We, Hausa and shantu players

Perhaps, even aware of their delectable beauty, they cocked a snook at their unapproving but silent admirers:

Sai dai a gan mu a bar mu/ Sai ko hararar  nesa/

The line is basically saying, look, but we are untouchable – you can only hate from afar. As I indicated earlier, the second performance, Alhaji Lawal Kalabayye, was named after the school’s food contractor, as confirmed by a former Home Economics teacher at the College, Mrs Lasfir Tasalla Andow, in 2019. The song, however, did not mention Alhaji Lawal himself, although the first lines of the song salute farmers – an obvious reference to food, and tangentially, to Alhaji Lawal!

Ina jin hausin mutumin ba ya zuwa gona/I am annoyed at a person who detests farming

Sai ya zauna a tsakar gida sai ka ce turmi/Always at home like some fixture

The song, however, further reaffirms the Hausa identity of the performers because they went through a cycle of profiling various ethnic groups – essentially pointing out the bad character traits of the groups, justifying their unwillingness to allow their daughters to marry them because of the profiled reasons they gave. For instance:

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa Zagezagi ba/I will not marry off my daughter to Zaria people

Fate da safe, fate da yamma, kamar mayu/Yam porridge all day, like hexers

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa Fulani ba/I will not marry off my daughter to the Fulani

Uwa a daji, uba a daji kamar kura/Both mother and father in wilderness, like hyenas

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa Beriberi ba/I will not marry off my daughter to the Kanuri

Uwa da tsagu, uba da tsagu kamar ƙwarya/Both mother and father with facial marks, like calabashes

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa Yoruba ba/I will not marry off my daughter to the Yoruba

Suna da kuɗi, amma a kwano suke kashi/They are wealthy, but they poop in their dishes

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa Katsinawa ba/I will not marry off my daughter to Katsina people

Uwa masifa, uba masifa kamar sauro /Both the mother and father are too fiery, like mosquitoes

Ina da ƴata ni baza na bai wa malamin bana ba/I will not marry off my daughter to modern Malams

Yana wazifa, hannunsa na shafa ƴan mata/While being devotional, they also fondle little girls

These stereotypes, of course, fall within the purview of joking relationships in forms of playful taunts between citizens of various cities that made up the old kingdoms of northern Nigeria. Such relationships are often based on ancestral pacts forbidding conflict or war between specific communities, and imply that the members must love one another and provide assistance where needed. The lyrics were therefore not meant to condemn or belittle any community or groups.  

It was surprising that Kano, with its almost manic commercialism, escaped this stereotyping – even though most of the girls were not from Kano, but perhaps their songwriters (most likely their Hausa subject teachers) were from, or affiliated with Kano! Whatever the case, their trenchant, non-politically correct lyrics cast them with an independent and spirited veneer that demands either acquiescence or indifference from the public. The ethnic groups of Yoruba, Kanuri and Fulɓe each came under their taunts. The Yoruba came into the picture because of Ilorin, considered one of the ‘bastard seven’ Hausa city-states (banza bakwai), although the historical narrative used Yoruba as a generic term; but it was only that Ilorin had a historical connection to the core Hausa states. Even respected Islamic teachers did not escape their barbs – – being accused of alleged sexual abuse of children under their care. This created a picture of betrayal of trust by those in charge of child care. Perhaps due to the constant radio criticisms of the girls by the cleric establishment in especially Kaduna and Kaduna, the performers felt obliged to point out that everyone has a bad spot, no matter how morally upright.

Alhaji Lawal Kalabayye ended with an acknowledgement of the support of their establishments in their art:

Teachers ku lura ku gane/Our teachers, be wary

Ƴan gulma suna nan/Gossipers abound

Yan baƙin ciki na nan/Haters are present

Gasunan dan su rabamu/Wanting to divide us

Wallahi baza su iya ba/By God, they will not succeed

They closed their performance with the song – and dance – that drew the ire of the public culture in northern Nigeria: Gantsare Gaye. The refrain was:

Gantsare gaye, gaye never go straight/

The sexual innuendo was clear in the ‘straight’ part of the chorus, and performing it in public took their art to a new level. The performance is available at https://bit.ly/3Eh0dYJ, with the ‘gantsarewa’ starting at tc1.01. ‘Gaye’ referred to what might be called ‘the dude’ – urban, transnational, metrosexual and sophisticated young man. Influenced by African American superstars such as Michael Jackson, young men in the north of Nigeria took to Jackson’s fashion and street cool. The Hausa ‘gaye’ (stylized from guy) was immortalized by the griot, Ɗan Maraya Jos in his song, ‘Ɗan Gaye Mugun Bawa’/The Badass.

Each of the girls was called out in the chorus to come and do the obscene gwatso dance – something that would probably make them blush later in their middle age years! Indeed, an unverified anecdote I once heard in Lagos decades after the event, was that one of the participating ladies phoned NTA requesting the TV station to stop repeated showing of the clip (which was part of archival cultural entertainment) because she said it was embarrassing.

The stage performance of Gantsare during the festival was more energetic than in the muted TV studio versions and an additional defiance to their critics – with total approval of their school.

Overall, regardless of the judgement on their performance, they did reflect an authentic female, and what I may even refer to as proto-teen feminist defiance. Certainly, the QAC girls had lent flair and elegance to a tradition of gendered performing art which counts as an intangible cultural heritage. Their granddaughters, by 2022, were the Gen Z cohort, and armed with TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, rather than the shantu, carried the self-expression and defiance to a whole new level as petulant, entitled generation, and certainly without the cultural authenticity their grandmothers had.

Shantu Jazz Fusion and the Mezcal Jazz Unit

The Kano State History and Culture Bureau (HCB) subsequently established its own shantu troupe, made up of more mature ladies and keeping the spirit of intangible heritage alive. I had the opportunity to watch them perform live at the Emirates Palace Hotel, Abu Dhabi, UAE, on 1st October 2009 as part of the preparations to the conference on preservation of musical heritage of various cultures, Hausa being one of those chosen. I was with them in the dressing rooms backstage where I interviewed them, and later recorded their performance. A little bit of it is at https://bit.ly/3GBaSQG. A second Hausa act at the concert was Nasiru Garba Supa, who also performed, although without Fati and her shantu because by then Fati had left the band after getting married, although HCB retained her in some capacity.

Earlier in February 2009, the French Cultural Centre in collaboration with Alliance Française, Kano, organized a Kano Music Festival, Kamfest 2009. This was to bring French and Nigerian artists together for a three-day music festival. One of the French bands was Mezcal Jazz Unit, a jazz band formed in Montpellier, France. The band had established a reputation as being a fine jazz band and creating crossover fusion recordings with artists from various cultures worldwide.

The HCB shantu troupe was also featured at Kamfest 2009. While each band performed separately, a segment was created where a jam session was performed fusing MZU’s jazz improvisations with the HCB shantu sounds and vocals from the players. This creation must be seen as a real bridge between the two cultures via both authentic and peaceful exchanges, through music. Two cultures, two countries, one music!

Mezcal Jazz Unit, whose identity is maintained by regular confrontation with musical groups from all horizons, was one of the rare groups capable of engaging in smooth and fluid artistic collaborations that appear spontaneous. Their quartet was based on the clearly established principle of openness, allowing for a continuous invitation of “jazz” and “non-jazz” artists. This spirit inspired Mezcal Jazz Unit to formally record with the shantu ensemble in February 2009, just before the KAMFEST festival. The result was a CD, recorded in Kano, but mastered, pressed and marketed in Paris. The CD was simply titled Shantu. Released in 2010, it is available at https://apple.co/3zEMdGR, although some videos of the performance are also available at https://bit.ly/3DBDLcm.

Recently, the shantu has started coming back as part of female entertainment, especially during wedding ceremonies, as reflected in quite a few TikTok uploads of various shantu performances during ceremonies. Perhaps tired of the synthesizer love songs typical of modern Hausa singers (not musicians, since the singers rarely create the music accompanying their song) a revival of Hausa intangible cultural heritage is probably happening.

Preservation of the Hausa Intangible Cultural Heritage in Performing Arts

According to UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage includes the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. Hausa female musical performance certainly are part of this heritage and is fast disappearing. There quite a few reasons for this.

First, music generally is frowned in Hausa societies. It is widely considered a low-class occupation (Smith has a good thought on this) – despite the immense popularity of both traditional griot and modern electronic (synthesizer) performing artists. This has the unpleasant outcome of relegating music and musicians to the background of any debate on social development.

Secondly, the subject matter of most musical performances also creates a distaste in the genre. With extremely few exceptions, Hausa performers are basically praise singers – singing the praises of politicians who pay them millions to praise them or denigrate their political opponents. This has contributed to lowering the image of musicians in the society. Rarely do musicians approach the art as an aesthetic process independent of client or patronage status.

Third, and mainly for women, public performance in predominantly Muslim communities is frowned upon because the audiences are not her muharrams – i.e., males with whom there is no possibility of any marriage. Salamatu Mai Gurmi, a female gurmi player, found a way around this by taking her husband along to her performances with his full permission. After all, the performances do put food on the table, as it were.

Fourth, the preservation of musical heritage requires a sustainable input in terms of concert dates, tours, record deals, publicity, distribution and marketing, etc., processes with not only required expertise that is absent among local, especially female, performers but also exposure – with attendant security risks – that will not make it possible for women to participate, no matter how talented. Currently, Barmani Choge’s female grandchildren have sustained their grandmother’s musical heritage in Funtua, Katsina State, but living in penury and lack of both individual and government support. I have instituted a project to get one of them to a studio and record her songs – which will be uploaded to YouTube for all to hear. Salamatu Mai Gurmi, from Bauchi, plays the gurmi on invitation to naming and wedding ceremonies, accompanied by her husband and playing to mainly female audience. She performed solely for the camera at https://bit.ly/3gkPKDS

Five, private female-only performances do take place in various places – for instance, the Sakaina (broken calabash as instruments) performance in the Kano Emir’s Palace in the past. However, such performances are not public, even though they are part of the intangible heritage to be preserved. There is a need to create public equivalents, even if restricted to private female audiences, of these performances, especially among older women.

As we focus on the preservation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in the performing arts domain of the Muslim Hausa female, the main thrust of such preservation falls on the National Institute of Cultural Orientation (NICO), a UNESCO country partner representing the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.

Thus, NICO can sustain its revival movements as a form of cultural activism that uses elements from the past to legitimate change—change comprising not only a reversion to past practices but innovation. Therefore, a series of initiatives are needed to preserve the intangible heritage of the shantu performance.

The Institute could initiate a policy dialogue involving public culture representatives – clerics, youth organizations, community leaders – that will fashion out an acceptable re-insertion of shantu music as accepted public performance. This is because the issue of the public visibility of the female within Islam has to be balanced out. Of course, there are many young women in Hausa societies who are currently performing as singers (though not as musicians) in the public domain. Yet, traditional instruments, in the hands of women and in public arena does tend to rub some people in the Islamicate culture of northern Nigeria the wrong way. Dialogue is critical to everyone being on the same page.  

At the same time, NICO could institute a competition among girls and young women and clustered by age for shantu playing, with prizes for the best three within each group. The songs needed not be on relationships – they could over all spectrum of human behavior, with prizes awarded for the best performance in each category – and such rewards to include marketing and promotion of the output.

Finally, the success of the crossover genre embarked by the Mezcal Jazz Unit and shantu clearly points to the future of such crossover improvisations. For instance, amada performers can be integrated with both shantu and gurmi players for a series of fusion concerts. This will create new innovations in Hausa female music and certainly provide a welcome alternative and exposure to a performance genre that is fast being smothered by synthesized sounds.

Select Bibliography

Adamu, Abdalla Uba. “Tribute to Hajiya Sa’adatu Ahmad Barmani Choge, Griotte, northern Nigeria, 1948-2013.” The Annual Review of Islam in Africa, University of Cape Town, South Africa, Issue No. 12/13, pp. 166-172, 2016.

Adamu, Abdalla Uba. “Womanist ethos and Hausa domestic ecology: A structuralist analysis of Barmani Choge’s operetta, Sakarai ba ta da wayo (Useless woman).” In S. Abdu (Ed.). Poetry and Poetics: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Literature in Northern Nigeria. Bayero University Kano: Department of English and French, pp. 93-120, 2008. 

Almajir, Tijjani Shehu. 2022. Sigogin Waƙoƙin Shantu da Tasirinsu a Rayuwar Hausawa. Bayero University Kano. Kadarkon Adabin Hausa: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Sa’idu Muhammad Gusau. Forthcoming, 2023.

‌Ames David Wason and King, Anthony V. Glossary of Hausa Music and Its Social Contexts. Northwestern University Press, 1971.

Ames, David Wason. “Professionals and Amateurs: The Musicians of Zaria and Obimo.”  African Arts, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 40-45+80+82-84, 1968.

‌DjeDje, Jacqueline Cogdell. “West Africa: An Introduction.” In Ruth Stone (Ed.). The Garland Handbook of African Music. New York: Routledge, pp. 166-197, 2000.

DjeDje, Jacqueline Cogdell. Fiddling in West Africa: Touching the Spirit in Fulɓe, Hausa, and Dagbamba Cultures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Erlmann, Veit. “Notes on Musical Instruments among the Fulani of Diamare (North Cameroon).” African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 16-41, 1983. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v6i3.1166.

Jatau, Phoebe. “Shantu Songs: An Example of the Oral Heritage of Hausa Women in Kaduna State.”  In Saleh Abdu and Muhammad Badmus (eds.), Writing, Performance and Literature in Northern Nigeria. 2nd ed. Kano: Bayero University Press, pp.166-182, 2006.

Kassam, Margaret Hauwa. “Some Aspects of Women’s Voices from Northern Nigeria.” African Languages and Cultures, vol. 9, no. 2, Gender and Popular Culture, pp. 111-125, 1996.

Kofoworola, Ziky and Yusef Lateef. Hausa Performing Arts and Music. Lagos, Nigeria: Department of Culture Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, 1987.

‌Mack, Beverly Blow. Muslim Women Sing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

MacKay, Mercedes. “The Shantu Music of the Harims of Nigeria.” African Music: Journal of the African Music Society, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 56–57, 1955. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v1i2.255.  

Musa, Umma Aliyu. “Promoting women empowerment through songs: Barmani Choge and her performances.” Journal of African Languages and Literatures, vol.1, 2020, pp.89-109, https://doi.org/10.6092/jalalit.v1i1.6735.  

Smith, Michael Garfield. “The Hausa System of Social Status.” Africa, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 239–252, 1959.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

As we enter into the ‘will they, will they not’ mode of uncertainty typical of Nigerian public culture about the change of Nigerian higher currency denominations announced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on 25th October 2022, my mind went back to an article I wrote on 16th April 2007. This was in the wake of the removal of “Arabic inscriptions” on the Nigerian currency (the Naira) on 28th February 2007 in the new currency notes that removed the Ajami (Hausa written in Arabic script) writing that indicated the denomination of the respective currency note and replaced with the Latin alphabet. This is a ‘remix’ of that posting on the then-popular platforms of Blogspot. Mine was called Nishadin Hululu (Hausa Popular Culture).

The full historical overview of how the Arabic “script” came to become part of the essentially northern Nigerian Muslim Hausa educational package is given in Manuscript Learnability and Indigenous Knowledge for Development – Hausa Ajami in Historical Context. A version is available at https://bit.ly/3zoi7XN.

I rarely bother to visit Nigerian “Naija” websites on the web or any other group of politically motivated Nigerians. I know what I will find – the usual vituperative tirade against northern Nigerians, Muslims, Hausa, ad nauseum. Southern Nigerians have three fundamental articles in their crusade against northern Nigeria: Islamic fanaticism, conservative feudalism and their weird perception of the “born to rule” syndrome held by the ‘northerners’. No matter how many groups of Nigerians you interact with, these three form the main focus of the divide in Nigeria. They are the main reasons why Nigerian “unity” is virtually impossible.

I doubt if there is any other group of Africans who hang out their dirty ethnic laundry like Nigerians. Although, I accept, for the most part, such ranting is probably not personal; they are basically religious – the Christian versus Muslim divide, rather than any feeling of superiority of one ethnic group over the other. Any such feelings of superiority are part of a religious template that sees the acquisition of education as the central criteria for judging the value of a whole people. Thus education, not religion, is the central fulcrum around which the Nigerian nation wobbles.

Southern Nigerians acquired education through Christian Missionary activities from about 1849. Such education became the mainstay of acquiring Westernized modernity. Inevitably Western education brought by Christian missionaries to Nigeria became equated with Western Christian values. For the most part, Christian southern Nigerians are happy with this because it makes them “civilised” – in the absence of any cherished antecedent cultural values. Thus, any other worldview is considered barbaric.

Northern Nigerians, specifically the Hausa and the Kanuri, acquired education through conversion to Islam since 1250 and even earlier in the Kanuri kingdom. The constant eddy of scholars from north African learning centres throughout the 14th to 17th centuries ensured a sustained scholastic tradition in Muslim northern Nigeria. Muslim northern Nigerians, therefore, had a longer exposure to the concept of formalised learning and literacy than southern Nigerians. Universal basic education was indeed introduced around 1464 in the city of Kano when new methods of indigenising the Arabic script to Hausa phonology were created. This led to the creation of a novel way of writing out the Hausa language in a script that young scholars will understand. This method of indigenising Arabic script to the Hausa language became “Ajami”. It became one of the main ways of educating young pupils in northern Nigeria. Do you remember all those “Almajirai” you see in northern Nigerian cities? Well, most are fluent in Ajami writing. Currently, the most prominent modern Hausa political singer (though not the most talented or likeable), Dauda “Rarara” Adamu Kahutu, has an extensive catalogue of his songs, all written in Ajami which he reads as he records in the studio.

Ajami, therefore, is any literacy strategy in which any language is written in Arabic. Over 50 languages are currently written in the script. First, let us look at the parallel sphere. If any African language is written in Latin characters, it can be called Ajami. Ajami is not Islamic; any more than the Latin alphabet is Christian.

However, in a new era of reform, CBN decided to remove the “Arabic” script from the Nigerian currency in new currency notes launched on 28th February 2007. The removal of the Ajami script on the Nigerian currency reflected Nigeria’s deep-rooted religious divide because the Arabic script was seen as religious – and Nigeria is considered a secular country. This equates Arabic with Islam – ignoring the vast number of Arab Christians throughout the Middle East.

The logic of the removal of what the Nigerian economic establishment calls “Arabic inscription” on the Nigerian currency given by the Nigerian Government was premised on using a Latin inscription that is available to all Nigerians (even if in mutually exclusive languages), rather than an exclusive script tied down to a particular religious culture. According to the then Governor of CBN, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, during a sensitisation visit to the Sultan of Sokoto,

“I will also like to inform you that the removal of the Arabic inscription on the notes is not targeted at any group or religion but rather to promote our language and cultural heritage…As you can see, Naira is the symbol of our nationalism and our pride. It is pertinent to let you understand that Arabic is not one of our national languages, and it was inscribed on the notes forty years ago because the majority of people then could read it in the northern part of the country to the detriment of their counterparts in the South (ThisDay, 16th February 2007, posted to the web 19th February 2007 at https://bit.ly/3TQ4FEw.

Similarly, the CBN issued a rebuttal to the controversies by stating that the “de-ajamization” was to “conform (to) Section 55 of the 1999 Constitution, which recognises four languages, English, Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba as medium of conducting government businesses.” After all, as they claimed, after forty years of Western education, most people in Nigeria should be able to recognise Roman inscriptions. This, we believe, can strengthen our unity by ensuring equity and fairness. Indeed, the replacement was done in national interest and the desire to comply with the Constitution of the country.”

But how can national unity be attained when a large proportion of the country is still marginalised? To prevent this marginalisation, the British colonial administration introduced the Ajami letters on the first Nigerian modernised currencies, well aware of the large education gap – and therefore, the ability to read and understand Latin characters on the country’s currency notes. An example was the £1 note.

“Fam daya” was prominently written to enable those literate in Ajami, but not the Latin alphabet, to identify the currency.

Interestingly, the main argument was that the presence of Ajami on Nigerian currency was seen to the “detrimental” to southern Nigerians (who presumably do not understand it) – yet the inclusion of the Latin alphabet is not seen as detrimental to non-Roman literate northern Nigerians (mainly Muslim Hausa, who presumably do not understand it). In this warped logic, it is, therefore, easier to alienate Muslim Hausa northern Nigerians than southern Nigerians, especially since a Christian was the President of the country (and a Christian Governor of the Central Bank facilitated the alienation). Of course, when a Muslim becomes the President, the arguments might be revisited – and reversed, which another subsequent Christian president will also revisit, and so on endlessly. Farooq Kperogi actually imagined a nightmare scenario that might come out of this in 2022 at https://bit.ly/3TOt2T1.

The inclusion of the script on the Nigerian currency by the British colonial administration was an acknowledgement of the rich literary heritage of a vast number of people in Nigeria who could not read the Latin script– and not a strategy to impose Islam on anyone in Nigeria. Indeed, the British colonial administration had no reason to propagate Islam. Yet on the currencies circulated by the same administration, the “Arabic inscription” was conspicuously present. This was maintained until 2007 when the despised Arabic inscription was removed and replaced with the much-loved Latin ‘inscription’. An example with ₦50 illustrates this.

The ₦50 with the ‘Arabic inscription’ of Ajami merely indicates that it is fifty naira in Hausa. In the redesigned ₦50, the Roman name for the Hausa was ‘naira hamsin’ instead of the Ajamized ‘hamsin’ in the old note. Yet, ‘hamsin’ means fifty in Arabic! So, like it or not, Arabic remains on the naira. To get rid of it, you have to get rid of the Hausa language entirely since about almost 45% of Hausa words are based on the Arabic language.

Further, other multicultural countries pay such homage to multiple literacies in their currency notes. The Indian currency, for instance, has 15 language scripts, including Urdu (Ajami) – despite Arabic not being part of its national languages.

And while not explicitly stated, the links made by the Nigerian economic establishment with Arabic to Islam seem to be part of a move to “de-Islamize” Nigeria – scoring a cheap point, particularly in the way most northern Nigerian states re-introduced Islamic Shari’a in their governance from 1999 led by Zamfara State, and the earlier issue of Nigeria’s membership of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) in January 1986, which the Nigerian Christian (as well as Marxist Muslim) groups were against.

We look forward to the new currency notes in December 2022.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu wrote from the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is, among many other things, the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

Being a keynote at the Kannywood Foundation film training workshop, on 2nd October 2022, Kano

A Tale of Two Cinemas

In November 2007, I was privileged to participate at the African Film Conference held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, United States. It was a stellar gathering of what I call the ‘Nollywood Mafia’. The outcome of the conference was reflected in the publishing of selected papers in Viewing African cinema in the twenty-first century: FESCAPO art films and the Nollywood video revolution, published by the Ohio University Press in 2007. At the tail-end of the conference, a session called The SIU Nollywood Project Brainstorming was held on Sunday, 11th November 2007. Containing well-known Nollywood scholars such as Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome, as well as Nollywood stars such as Joke Silver, Francis Onwochei and Madu Chikwendu, among others (including those who study Nollywood from the fringes such as Brian Larkin and Birgit Meyer), the session sought to determine funding for research on Nollywood from the US National Endowment for the Humanities. A critical point of discussion during the session was the name ‘Nollywood’.

While discussions were on course for the funding mechanism, there was a feeling from the participants that the term Nollywood should be used to reflect all films from Africa, regardless of region, to create a unified view of African cinema. As the only northern Nigerian with a focus (and paper earlier presented) on Hausa cinema, I objected and spent time arguing why the term Nollywood cannot be used as a blanket term for African cinema. Continentally, films from north Africa from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania are radically different from those produced by Nigerian Nollywood. Similarly, filmmakers from Chad, Burkina Faso, Senegal Cote d’Ivoire are more ethnographic to their cultures, which makes them required viewing for film and cultural studies across the world.

Even back in Nigeria, there is a radical difference between Hausa language cinema and the type of films produced and promoted by Nollywood. Labelling all African films as Nollywood is to cancel the identity of the portrayals of the films by different cultural groupings in the continent and project Nollywood as the only ‘African voice’. I am unsure whether the funding was obtained, but I know that the idea of labelling all African films as ‘Nollywood,’ regardless of cultural point of origin, was dropped.

***

By 2012 the Hausa film industry had literally crashed. The major marketers-cum-producers had all pulled out of the industry. Their shops in the major video markets in Kano were subsequently filled with clothing—particularly blouses and football jerseys; for these make more money than selling films. Others took to selling Smartphone accessories, while others returned to the farm and became serious farmers. The few Hausa megastar actors took to commercial advertising of noodles, milk and other household commodities – often moving from house to house with products’ marketers – relying on their faces and voices (making sure they introduce themselves in all the commercial jingles) to sell to increasingly hungry population caught in the vortex of economic depression. The frequency of releasing films drastically dropped because no one was buying. International Satellite channels like the Indian Zee World, especially their English-dubbed TV series, caught Hausa urban attention more than recycled Hindi film clones that were the hallmarks of Hausa video films. Consequently, many reasons combine to lead to the crash of the Hausa film industry towards the end of 2016. 

Market congestion

The popular cultural industries in Kano were marketed into market hubs. The Bata market at the edge of Sabon Gari controlled the predominantly foreign films and music sales and the main distribution centre to other parts of Nigeria and Africa, where a sizeable market existed in Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Chad and Congos.

When the Hausa video film arrived in 1990, it found a ready template to attach itself. The other was Kasuwar Ƙofar Wambai, located at the edge of the walls of Kano city and near a cluster of old colonial cinemas. The Wambai market focuses mainly on leather, textile and plastics. However, it was also the hub of audio tape sales – with marketers doing brisk business pirating old EMI, Polydor and HMV tapes of traditional Hausa musicians recorded in the 1960s. Road construction work at Bata in about 2003 created unfavourable conditions for many of the stall owners, and some decided to shift to the Wambai market. By 2005 the video film market had moved entirely to Wambai, which now became the new Bata.

The Wambai market, hitherto occupied by cassette dealers who ignored the Hausa film industry, suddenly became a virgin territory for film marketers and producers, with each opening a stall. In less than five years, it had reached its ascendency and crashed due to the massive congestion of producers and marketers – all selling the same thing. When I visited the market in May 2017, I counted less than ten stalls selling either videos or audio; contrasted to some five years ago when it was bursting at the seams with these products. The stalls have now been taken over by stocks of cheap blouses, football jerseys and cloned Smartphone accessories.

Lack of new or captivating scripts

By 2005 the Hausa video film industry had become fully established, with over 1,600 officially censored releases. With an extremely few exceptions of less than 0.5%, they all revolve around a pastiche of Hindi films in one form or other aimed, as the video filmmakers themselves kept insisting, at urban Hausa children, youth and housewives. Yet, most Hindi films could be classified as musicals, especially due to their reliance on a strong dosage of song and dance sequences blended with a melodramatic storyline, which employs formulaic ingredients such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, corrupt politicians, kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.

This stylistic technique provides a vehicle for echoing a fundamental Hausa emotional tapestry in three main creative motifs: auren dole (forced marriage, the love triangle, and the obligatory song and dance sequences—with an average of about six songs in a two-part video. With every producer trying to outwit everyone with more love triangles, song and dance routines, the market became saturated, and audiences got bored – and indicated this by refusing to buy the films.

Monopoly by Megastars

Those actors lucky enough to be accepted early enough in the film industry came to dominate the system. This was actually imposed by the marketers who insisted on a particular actor appearing in a film they would sponsor or market because such actors were more bankable and guaranteed quick sales of their films. With this economic force behind them, such few (perhaps less than five) came to dominate almost every ‘big’ budget Hausa film. By 2017 their stars had started fading; audiences became tired of seeing them in nearly the same film with different names, and marketers dropped them. While still making films, they diversified their faces and voices to commercial advertising for major telephone service providers and essential commodities such as chicken noodles and milk and soup seasoning.

The fading of the fortunes of the megastars became evident with the ascendency and popularity of relatively unknown stars of a TV series, Daɗin Kowa, shown on Arewa24 satellite TV that began on 21st January 2015. Daɗin Kowa (pleasant to everyone) is an imaginary town that serves as a melting pot, housing Nigerians of various ethnicities and religions and yet living peacefully. In 2016 it won Africa Magic Awards over Sarki Jatau, an expensive lavish, traditionally cultural Hausa period drama.

The coming of Arewa24, initially conceived and funded by the United States State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism to counteract insurgency in 2014, merely placed another nail in the coffin of the Hausa video film market. Transnational in its outlook, the Arewa24 TV series provide a level of script sophistication unheard of in the Hausa film industry. Other Satellite TV stations, such as StarTimes, and Hausa Channels on Africa Magic DStv, including GoTV, became increasingly affordable. Showing a massive amount of Hausa films, they eclipsed the purchase of CDs and DVDs of Hausa films. Audiences prefer to watch for free than to go through the hassle of purchasing DVDs that often do not work and requiring DVD players, mostly Chinese knock-offs of international brands that often turn out dodgy.

New Media, New Poverty

The Internet provided the biggest blow to the decline of Hausa video films. With telecommunication companies competing for customers and undercutting each other in offering data plans, Hausa youth have more access to social media sites such as Instagram and YouTube. The latter, in particular, provided them with opportunities to upload hundreds of Hausa films for all to see. While this has increased the visibility of Hausa films worldwide, such popularity does not translate to return on investment, as most of the films were illegally uploaded to YouTube.

Another dimension of the new media political economy was the proliferation of Download Centers in northern Nigeria, with the largest groups in Kano. Operators of these Centers rip the CD of DVDs of Hausa films and convert them into 3gp formats and make them available to customers at N50 per film—with discounts given for volume purchase. A 1GB microSD card can pack as many as 20 films. The 3gp format makes it possible for people to watch the films on their Smartphones, which readily and rapidly replaced DVD players, which require a TV and electricity – something not always guaranteed in Nigeria. Often the Downloaders ‘lease’ the films from street vendors – children hawking the CDs and DVDs at traffic lights – for N100 per film, rip them off, and return back to the hawker who simply puts them back into its pristine cellophane wrapper and eventually sells it – thus gaining double profit. Both the various Associations of Hausa filmmakers and the Kano State Government’s Censorship Board had tried to stamp out the Downloaders, but without success, as the latter had become so powerful and organized that they formed various Associations. The punitive steps were usually to arrest them, fine them, and order them to delete the illegal ripped-off films from their computers. These measures proved so ineffective that a deal was worked out in 2017 between the filmmakers and the Downloaders to ‘officially’ lease the films to the Downloaders for a fee in the form of a ‘legal license’. However, these measures did not work because the Downloaders prefer to obtain their films cheaply rather than being registered with the Government as licensing the films. On the other hand, the Kano State Censorship Board simply asks them to register their business and charge them fees, regardless of their downloading bootleg business.

Southern Indian Competition

A final factor in the decline of the Hausa film industry by 2012 was the massive popularity of ‘Indiya-Hausa’ films. These were Telugu and other southern Indian films dubbed into the Hausa language by, first, Algaita Studios in Kano. When the marketers at Wambai market noted the popularity of these dubs, they also moved in and commissioned their own dubbed translations.

The original Telugu films were brought to Kano by an Indian national with full license to translate into local African languages. The first film translated by Algaita Studios was the Bhojpuri film, Hukumat Ki Jung (dir. S.S. Rajamouli, 2008). It was translated as ‘Yaƙi da Rashin Adalci’ (Fighting Injustice). Others that followed included Dabangg (dir. Abhinav Kashyap, 2010), Racha (dir. Sampath Nandi, 2012) and Nayak: The Real Hero (dir. S. Shankar, 2001). In an interactive session in June 2016, Buzo Ɗanfillo, the CEO of Algaita Studios and whose voice is used in the translations, told me that the Algaita Studio had translated 93 films by 2016. They were paid ₦80,000 by the Indian licensee of the films.

The first few films that appeared from the Algaita Studio from 2012 were considered novelties, providing relief from watching complete remakes of Hindi films by Hausa filmmakers or even the originals themselves. What made them more attractive, however, was the translation of the titles of the films in a single powerfully expressed word, or a couple of words, that seems to take a life of their own and communicate either adventure, danger or defiance. For instance, Nayak: The Real Hero (dir. S. Shankar, 2001) was translated as ‘Namijin Duniya’ (lit. Brave); Indirajeet (dir. K.V. Raju, 1991) as ‘Fargaba’ (Fear), and Velayudham (dir. Mohan Raja, 2011) as ‘Mai Adda’ (Machete). Referred to as ‘India-Hausa’ (Hausa versions of Indian films), they quickly became the new form of transcultural expression in the Hausa entertainment industry.

The Indiya-Hausa translations were massively successful and attracted audiences not attuned to Indian films in the first place. This can be deduced from the numerous comments on the Facebook pages of the Algaita Dub Studio (https://www.facebook.com/algaitadub/).

Their success created a public debate, mainly online on social networks, about their cultural impact. In the first instance, there does not seem to be any attempt by the translators to mute some of the bawdier dialogues of the originals – translating the dialogue directly into Hausa. Kannywood filmmakers latch on to this as an indication of cultural impropriety of the translated films. Additionally, the often-romantic scenes revealing inter-gender sexuality were not edited out by the translators since their focus is not the visuals but the voices. This, again, was pointed out by Hausa filmmakers as a direct attack on Hausa cultural sensibilities. Kannywood filmmakers accept that they appropriate Hindi films but argue that they culturally adapt the stories to reflect Muslim Hausa sensibilities.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu wrote from the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is, among many other things, the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

S01EP03: Betelgeuse Star System Touchdown

On my return in April 2012, I reported to my Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed. In a moment of radical inspiration, he asked me to submit every publication and activity in communication to the HoD of Mass Communication, the late Dr Balarabe Maikaba, for possible recommendation as a professor of Media and Cultural communication. In the meantime, a position for a professor was created in the Department of Mass Communication to accommodate my presence.

I was surprised at this as I thought once you are a professor, you stay that way without any addition! The then Dean of the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Prof. Adamu Idris Tanko, also welcomed the idea. Dr Balarabe Maikaba wrote a supporting letter. I put in the application and submitted all the papers I had in the new area for external assessment.

In January 2013, I received a phone call from my Vice-Chancellor informing me that assessments of my publications sent out months earlier had returned positive. Therefore, I have been appointed Information and Media Studies professor with effect from October 2012. There was only one wonderful caveat: I was to relocate to the Department of Mass Communication from the Department of Science and Technology Education, where I was then the Head of the Department. This relocation was the most significant move in my academic career. The day I received that letter counted as one of the happiest of my entire life.

I suddenly realized that my earlier desire to be in the Faculty of Science was to become a research scientist. Now, 32 years later, I have become a research social scientist while retaining my scientific focus. Allah truly blessed me. The journey to the first professorship took 17 years (1980-1997), while the second took 15 years (1997 to 2012).

I handed over the Department of Science and Technology Education on April 25 2013, symbolic of my birthday. My new Department and the Faculty overwhelmingly welcomed me when I formally reported on April 26 2013. Even more remarkable, the Communication Studies fraternity also welcomed me – apparently, they have been keenly following my what one calls ‘revolutionary forays’ in media studies.

It was thus an honour to be made a member of the Governing Council of the Association of Media and Communication Researchers of Nigeria (AMCRON) and a member of the Association of Communication Scholars & Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN). It was humbling to be in the company of communication giants such as Idowu Akanbi Sobowale, Ralph Akinfeleye, Lai Oso, Umaru Pate, Nosa Owens-Ibie, Hyginus Ekwuazi, Victor Ayedun-Aluma, Eserinune McCarty Mojaye, Abiodun Adeniyi and many wonderful others. It was always a pleasure to meet at various conferences and workshops and appreciate each other.

I was given a huge sparkling brand-new office with all the frills! I have already been teaching Management Information Systems (MIS) in the Department of Business Administration of the Faculty for almost ten years. Additionally, I had been a ‘part-time’ staff of the Mass Communication Department for seven years, teaching and supervising students. So, I was not new to the faculty. For me, being in the Department of Mass Communication was the absolute way to chill out my career to retirement in 2026, in shaa Allah.

So, am I the only ‘double’ professor in Nigeria? It depends on the context. If you are referring to two professorships in two different disciplines (which is the actual context of a double professor), then yes, according to the NUC’s Directory of Full Professors in the Nigerian University System (2017), I am. However, being a professor at two different universities does not count. The second professorship has to be qualified through an external assessment of scientific works in the discipline, a process my Vice-Chancellor at the time and Chairman of the Appointment and Promotions Committee of the University rigorously followed.

Is this the same as Emeritus Professor (some have referred to me as such)? No. An Emeritus Professor is an honorary title given to a professor to show respect for a distinguished career and who has retired (critical qualifier) from the university successfully and honourably. It is neither a right nor automatic. It is a privilege (just like the professorship itself), given at the discretion of the university to an outstanding professor (mostly the university one is retiring from, although an appointment to such position could also be made to the retiring professor in a different university).

One cannot be appointed an Emeritus until they have retired (whether before or at the age of retirement). It is usually conferred (at a ceremony) to those the university feel that despite retiring, they can still add value to the academic programs of the university, either through teaching, research, supervision or other leadership functions. It often attracts a token stipend (not salary), and the office the professor retired from. It is also for life – meaning he stops being an Emeritus when he shifts to the other side of the universe the James Webb Space Telescope would not be able to locate! Here is a list of Emeritus Professors in Nigeria (updating).

How common is double professorship generally? Rare. A limited discussion was held on Quora, where a few examples from some American universities were cited. For instance, Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia and a professor of statistics at Harvard. He has no political science degree at all. His first degree was in physics, and his graduate work was in statistics. He has received the Outstanding Statistical Application award three times from the American Statistical Association, the award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the Mitchell and DeGroot prizes from the International Society of Bayesian Analysis, and the Council of Presidents of Statistical Societies award. Have a look at this blog to know how he came to be occupying those two chairs.

This answers the question of whether I should be a professor in Mass Communication without a degree in Mass Communication. At the professorial level, it is your output that matters. My own site might satisfy one’s curiosity about what the fuss is all about. As my Vice-Chancellor at the time, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, pointed out when my case was presented in 2012, if anyone is a professor of History and made enough contributions to the field of Physics, they can also apply and be assessed as a professor of Physics.

Oh, I almost forgot. Two professorships? Yes. Two salaries? Unfortunately, no! You get only one salary.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu wrote from the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is, among many other things, the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

SE01EP02: Deep Space: The Apotheosis

Like a bolt of lightning, a key to open the freedom door dropped literally on my lap through the radio. In 1996 the government of Kano (Nigeria), where I live, was battling with Hausa creative fiction and public morals. One after the other, Islamic sheikhs came on the radio and condemned newly emerging Hausa creative fiction writers as being responsible for poor attention span in schools (and subsequent poor grades) and immorality. They did not indicate how many of the novels they had read, though. Their condemnations caught my attention, for it seems there was a reading culture among Hausa youth – something public culture kept lamenting as lacking among youth.   

Reading culture is, of course, an environment where reading is championed, valued, respected, and encouraged. BUT it seems that the reading culture in Kano meant reading school textbooks (if available) and passing examinations. Reading culture? James Hadley Chase, Harold Robbins, Irvin Wallace, Agatha Christie, Denise Robbins, Nick Carter, Joan Collins, Wilbur Smith, et al., anyone? So why not Ado Ahmad, Balaraba Ramat, Ɗan Azumi Baba, Bilkisu Salisu Ahmed Funtuwa? All the objections against Hausa literature were based on the baseless Media Effects Theory, which believes that mass media influences the attitudes and perceptions of audiences.

I, therefore, decided to delve into this ‘problem’ further. It was to be a bridge between cultural studies (popular culture) and education (reading culture).

I eventually traced the production of Hausa novels to the City Business Center in the city of Kano under the proprietorship of Alhaji Abba Lawan Maiunguwa, a childhood friend. This led to Ado Ahmed Gidan Dabino, unarguably the most successful of Hausa novelists, and the forging of a life-long friendship based on respect. I spent about two years in the field, talking, recording, and unarchiving writers, critics and fans of the Hausa creative fiction.

The writers included Ahmad Mahmood Zaharadden Yakasai, Yusuf Muhammad Adamu, Ibrahim Saleh Gumel, Ɗan Azimi Babba Cheɗiyar Ƴan Gurasa, Aminu Abdu Na’inna, Badamasi Shu’aibu Burji, Hamisu Bature, Aminu Hassan Yakasai, Abdullahi Yahaya Mai Zare, Bala Muhammad Makosa, Bashir Sanda Gusau, Bala Anas Babinlata. Female authors of the period included Hauwa Aminu, Talatu Wada, Zuwaira Isa, Safiya A. Tijjani, Binta Bello Ɗanbatta, Binta Maiwada, Jummai Mohammed Argungu Karima Abdu D/Tofa, Bilkisu S. Ahmed, and the most outstanding of them all, Balaraba Ramat Yakubu.

Along the line, I developed the Hausa hooked glottal sound characters (Ƙ, ƙ, Ɗ, ɗ, Ɓ, ɓ) to help in proper Hausa writing on computer word processing programs using Fontographer software. But that is a story for another day. Next, I went to my dad, Muhammadu Uba Adamu (Kantoma), discussed with him my new-found direction and sought his blessings. He readily approved. Not surprising, considering he had always been a radical on his right. Further, my early contact with literature was from his library, as he studied Political History with English Literature as a minor. His approval, and even later, endorsement, gave me courage.

Finally, I summoned enough nerve (remember, it was not my field, and I was aware those ‘in the field’ jealously guard their turf) to write an article and send it to Ibrahim Sheme of the New Nigerian Weekly newspaper. It was titled “Hausa Literature in the 1990s”. It was published in their April 24 and May 1, 1999 issues. It created a tsunami of a reaction.

Unbeknownst to me, the debate about the merits (or lack of) of Hausa creative fiction had run its course in various Hausa language newspapers and magazines. Hawwa Ibrahim Sherif fired the first salvo in an interview with Ibrahim Sheme, published in Nasiha, on September 6 1991 (some eight years before my own article).

Following on from her views (and she was a writer herself), two camps emerged – those who did not see any merit in the novels, and those who believed in them, the latter, perhaps understandably, was made up of mainly authors themselves, such as Ado Ahmad Gidan Dabino, Yusuf Adamu, Kabiru Assada, etc. In 1998, Novian Whitsitt, an American student, even submitted a PhD thesis on Hausa creative fiction with a focus on Hajiya Balaraba Ramat Yakubu. His thesis was titled The Literature of Balaraba Ramat Yakubu and the Emerging Genre of Littattafai na Soyayya: A Prognostic of Change for Women in Hausa Society.” It was submitted to the African Studies Program University of Wisconsin-Madison.

You could therefore imagine the fire I came under; An Educationist was venturing into Hausa literary studies. Some accused me of being an ignoramus who knows nothing about Hausa literature (true), and others accused me of encouraging immorality (not true).

To get rid of my accused ignorance, I adopted two methods – both facilitated by my being a true believer in science and its methods. The first was rooted in the ethnology of Hausa cultural production. This approach was based on Victor Turner’s exposition of the ‘anthropology of experience’, itself based on Wilhelm Dilthey’s conception of ‘what has been lived through’. The approach enables the exploration of how people actually experience their culture and how those experiences are expressed in forms as varied as narrative, literary work, theatre, carnival, ritual, reminiscence, and life review. To get a closer look at the cultural production, it was necessary to be embedded in the process.

I started by identifying what was more or less a Bohemian cluster of Hausa fiction writers hanging out at City Business Center, Daneji, Kano city, along Sabon Titi. Then, I embedded myself into their cluster and observed what they were doing – inspiration for their stories, discussing plots for stories, typing, artwork, printing, marketing, etc. This went on for almost five years from 1998. As a result, I gained deep insights into their creativity and concerns. I also read quite a few of the fiction they produced to gain a more immersive experience.

In this process, I did not rely on secondary data but became a primary data gatherer myself. This came in good stead much later when I submitted a paper to a journal based in France. The editor wanted me to provide references for some of the narrative encounters. I pointed out that I was the reference and used Turner’s field study framework as a basis because I was there. The editor accepted, and eventually, the paper was published.

For the second method, I launched myself into a self-study of Critical Theory from the roots: to reflect on and critique society through literature. There were four varieties of such theory: new criticism, poststructuralism, psychoanalytic criticism, and Marxist theory. I delved into the first two, deeming that the other two do not apply to my data. I became a student of Jürgen Habermas and his “Structural Transformation of Public Sphere”, in which I see Islamicateness in expounding the boundaries of the public sphere. Stuart Hall and his critical works in cultural studies provided another roadmap to understanding the reception of media texts. Marshall Hodgson’s essay on the idea of “Islamicate” societies seemed to mesh perfectly well with my own sites of contestation of media production, distribution and consumption. Anthony Giddens and his Structuration provided an excellent introduction to Agency.

I thus refused to cage myself within Nigerian Hausaist (for which I am not one) delineation of Hausa studies into apparently mutually incompatible divisions of Literature (Adabi), Language (Harshe) and Culture (Al’ada). I said ‘apparently mutually incompatible’ because if you are versed or specialized in one, you are not expected to know much about the other. In other words, you should ‘stay behind the yellow line’!

And so, the battlelines were drawn, and for almost five years to 2004, New Nigerian Weekly and Weekly Trust pages were awash with what Ibrahim Sheme referred to as The Great Soyayya Debate. I was in the thick of it. But, since the debates were on pages of newspapers and therefore meant for the general readership, I focused on simply defending the right to write rather than the morals of the contents (for which, in my opinion, show cleanliness) or the grammatical sophistication of the writers. They have a right to write and thus write the rites to right the wrongs they perceive in society – after all, the genre is referred to as ‘adabi’ (reflection).  

Only four people at Bayero University believed in what I was doing. Isma’ila Abubakar Tsiga, Sa’idu Ahmad Babura, Abubakar Adamu Rasheed and Ibrahim Bello-Kano – all from the Department of English and European Languages. Ibrahim Bello-Kano, or IBK as he is popularly referred to, was the Seminar coordinator in the Department of English and European Languages in 2001. He invited me to present a paper at their Departmental Seminar, which I agreed to and presented in January 2001. It was the first academic presentation of my research. I was understandably nervous because I was presenting something on new terrain to people fully trained and versed in it. However, the paper’s title, Tarbiyar Bahaushe, Mutumin Kirki and Hausa Prose Fiction: Towards an Analytical Framework, introduced something to the polemics besides just moral indignation.

However, soon enough, the massive success of Hausa fiction authors (despite scathing criticism from academic and public culture) emboldened them enough to migrate to the emergent Hausa video film industry. If there is one person to be credited with creating the Hausa film industry, it was a writer, the late Aminu Hassan Yakasai. He was both a novelist, a scriptwriter and a Hausa soap opera star. He and his collaborators, such as Bashir Mudi Yakasai and Salisu Galadanci, launched the first Hausa video film, Turmin Danya, in March 1990. This predated Nollywood’s Living in Bondage in 1992. Sunusi Burhan Shehu, a novelist, established a Hausa film magazine, Tauraruwa, and in a regular column in August 1999, created the term “Kanywood” to refer to the Hausa film industry. It is the first reference to a film industry in Africa and predated “Nollywood”, which was coined in 2002 by Norimitsu Onishi in a New York Times report.

In 1999 Sarauniya Films Kano released the catalytic video film that literally shaped the direction of the industry. It was Sangaya. It was, like most Hausa youth literature, mainly a love story. It was not the story that was significant about the film, however, but its soundtrack with catchy song and dance routines backed by synthesized sound samples of traditional Hausa instruments such as kalangu (talking drum), bandiri (frame drum) and sarewa (flute). The effect was electric on a youth audience seeking alternative and globalized—essentially modern—means of being entertained than the traditional music genre, which seemed aimed at either rural audiences or older urbanites. It became an instant hit. Indeed, the success of Sangaya was as momentous in the history of the Hausa video film industry as Living in Bondage was for the southern Nigerian video films. The Hausa video films that subsequently emerged were predominantly based on cloning Bollywood films and production characteristics – love triangles, gender rivalry, and choreographic song and dance routines. At least until 2007, when the system crashed after the leakage of a private steamy sex video of a popular actress. The entire entry was labelled bad, just like the literature industry. A new censorship regime was instituted that made film production difficult.

Internet became widely available late 1990s, and by 2000 it had become affordable. Before that, we had to rely on the National Universities Commission (NUC) switchbacks to access it. So when Nitel started offering it, we jumped on. Yahoo! Groups was launched in early 2001. A series of discussion boards formed the earliest reiteration of social networks, predating Facebook, which was created in 2004 but became available only in 2009 to us. Seizing the opportunity to create lively discussions, I formed three groups on the Yahoo! Groups platform: Finafinan Hausa, Littattafan Hausa, and Mawaƙan Hausa, from August 31 to November 15 2001. Finafinan Hausa was by far the liveliest.

By 2009 when the discussions whittled away, there were almost 25,000 postings on the board. Other boards did not fare too well. Further, between 2000 to 2009, I chaired thirteen Hausa video film award ceremonies, four of which were organized by Yahoo! Groups. The discussion board really popularized many of the Hausa video film stars. The University of Frankfurt in Germany even dedicated a Library Officer to join the groups and harvest all the comments as examples of public discourse on Hausa popular culture.

All these did not prevent me from participating in educational alphabet soup agency activities, so I was still rooted in Education. Criss-crossing the north, training education officials, writing reports no one read, and working out the next activity. Along the process, I became Head of the Department of Education – rather reluctantly, for I was enjoying fieldwork in cultural production and educational alphabet soup interventions (the latter helped to put additional plates on the table!).

In 1993 the late Prof. Mike Egbon of the Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University Kano, visited my office and asked me to help supervise his PhD student who was working on the transfer of communication education curriculum from the US to Nigeria. Between 1991 to 1992, I was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkely. My work focused on the transnational transfer of education from the US to Nigeria, resulting in a book published in 1994 in New York. It was titled Living on a Credit Line: Reform and Adaptation in Nigerian University Curricula. It was my work in the US which I had been discussing at various places within the campus that attracted Mike Egbon, and he appointed me as co-supervisor and internal examiner to his student. Mike Egbon, then, was the one who opened the door for me to enter the Mass Communication department.

While all this was happening, a conference on Hausa video films was held in one of the northern Universities. The conference condemned the films, just as earlier on, the writers of Hausa fiction were also condemned. Many of these writers, using the cheap availability of video cameras, had transitioned from Hausa fiction to Hausa films and, in the process, attracted a lot of mainly non-indigenous Hausa into the industry. But because these elements use the Hausa language in their films and rely virtually exclusively on cloning Hindi cinema, all Hausa films were tarred with the same paintbrush. So the focus of the conference held somewhere in the north was to confirm how bad the films were from cultural perspectives.

However, in August 2002, a group of academicians and members of the Hausa entertainment industry in Kano got together to discuss the state of research on Hausa popular culture and media technologies, with particular reference to the Hausa films. It was meant to be a brainstorming session with various inputs from members overshadowed by the then-current crisis in the non-marketability of Hausa films due to condemnations from the public culture. Further, it was noted that there had been no systematic study of the phenomena from academic perspectives, at least by the practitioners themselves. A strong observation at this meeting was the increasing role of media technologies in popular culture and how Hausa urban communities are refining the concept of entertainment among the Hausa.

The group noted, with concern, a lack of local input into the systematized pieces of research showing the relationship between Hausa culture and popular media as a vehicle of cultural preservation and transmission. In this regard, it was noted some of the most significant advances in this area were made by our foreign Hausaist colleagues. All these researchers have published extensively on Hausa culture and language, and their works are heralded as authoritative accounts of Hausa popular media.

Thus, while the group acknowledged the immense contributions made by these foreign researchers, it saw these researches as challenges to stimulating local scholars into exploring other terrains of popular culture among the Hausa. As a result of these observations, the group suggested a series of activities aimed at creating collaborative opportunities for research between local researchers, practitioners of popular culture (literature, music, film, indigenous knowledge etc.) and international partners. A committee was formed to articulate all these into a conference, and I was made the Chairman of the Committee.

Eventually, on 3rd to 5th August 2003, we held the first-ever international conference on Hausa films in Kano, with the theme of Hausa Home Videos: Technology, Economy and Society. It was hugely successful, attracting presentations from US and Germany in addition to both local film practitioners and academicians. I, Yusuf Adamu and Umar Faruk Jibril edited the papers and a book with the same title as the conference was published in Kano in 2004. The resolution of the conference was to establish a Center for Hausa Cultural Studies. This was meant to be a think tank that would hold monthly events to promote Hausa cultural production in the internet age.

Later, tired of the constant criticisms against me from the film industry despite all my efforts (they believed that by focusing on culture, I was disparaging their art), I shifted my ethnographic focus to music, with a particular focus on the Rap genre which was trending at the time. This community of cultural producers – K-Boyz, Kano Riders, Lil’ TeAxy, BMERI, ClassiQ, Dr Pure, G-Fresh, Haddy, K-Arrowz, the late Lil’ Amir, etc. – proved more welcoming than filmmakers.

By 2004 I had attracted the attention of some colleagues overseas, particularly Brian Larkin in the US, Graham Furniss in the UK and Heike Behrend in Germany. I even wrote a visa approval letter for Heike Behrend, then Director, Institute of African Studies, University of Cologne, Germany, to come to Nigeria and conduct fieldwork on Hausa films. Heike Behrend was to later “adopt” me as her son. She is a brilliant ethnologist with a field experience in Kenya and Uganda, as detailed in her excellent book, Incarnation of an Ape. An autobiography of ethnographic research (2020), which itself is a textbook on the anthropology of experience. As she stated in a YouTube introduction to the book, “it was about reversing the perspective and showing how those I meant to ethnograph ethnographed me.”

Thus, when Graham Furniss was asked to nominate participants for a “Seminar on Media in Africa” in Nairobi, Kenya, organized by the International African Institute in August 2004, he nominated my name, and I was accepted. Again, in the same year, he was invited to Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (plainly referred to as the University of Mainz) to participate in the 8th International Janheinz Jahn Symposium “Creative Writing in African Languages: Production, Mediation, Reception”. It was to be held at the Centre for Research on African Literatures, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 17-20 November 2004. Graham had too many engagements for the period and suggested to the organizers that I should be invited – something they accepted. I received an invitation to participate in the conference.

At the first event in Nairobi, I met Heike Behrend, who was also invited, and during an off-conference interaction over a cup of expresso (her favourite rendering of coffee!!) I informed her of my coming trip to Mainz for a conference. She immediately extended an invitation for me to come to the University of Cologne on my way to Mainz and present a seminar to doctoral students on any topic I like. This I did on November 15 2004 and presented a paper to the students. It was titled “Enter the Dragon: Sharī’ah, Popular Culture and Film Censorship in northern Nigeria.”

Note, from the poster, that I was still in the Department of Education. When I returned to Nigeria, I met Dr Gausu Ahmad, then Head of the Department of Mass Communication BUK, who insisted on the paper being presented at their own Departmental Seminar. Before that, I was already teaching Advanced Research Methods to postgraduate students and Online Journalism at all levels. Further, I was already working with a doctoral student in the Department. Unknown to me, Dr Gausu had already recommended my employment as a Part-Time lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication. A letter to that effect was eventually sent to me in November 2005. Earlier, the Department had requested my transfer from Education, but the Vice-Chancellor at the time refused.

The visit to Germany in 2004 was the beginning of a series of travels to various universities as a visiting lecturer/professor/guest speaker etc., in media and cultural production. These included the US (University of Florida, Gainesville; Rutgers State University of New Jersey; Barnard College, Columbia University), UK (School of African and Oriental Studies), Switzerland (University of Basel), Germany (Freie University, Berlin; University of Mainz; University of Freiburg; University of Cologne, University of Hamburg; Humboldt University), South Africa (University the Witwatersrand), and Cameroon (University of Yaoundé).

In November 2008, I was once more invited to Germany for an event. After my event at the University of Hamburg, one of the participants, Nina Pawlak from the Department of African Languages and Cultures, University of Warsaw, Poland, approached me and asked if I would like to visit Poland for three months as a Visiting Professor. I delightfully accepted. The funding was to come from the European Union under the program of The Modern University – a comprehensive support program for doctoral students and teaching staff of the University of Warsaw as part of Sub-measure 4.1.1 “Enhancing the educational capacity of a higher education institution” of the Human Capital Operational Programme, of the EU. After all the paperwork was done, I was eventually offered the Visiting Professor position at the Department of African Languages and Cultures, University of Warsaw, Poland, from March 1 to May 31 2012. I taught two courses: Transnationalism and Identity in African Popular Culture and Oral Traditions in Local and Global Contexts.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu wrote from the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is, among many other things, the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

Pilot: The journey, the chrysalis

Right, it is time to address this issue. I am blessed and honoured to have variously been acknowledged and hailed as a ‘double professor’, ‘dual professor’, the only one from northern Nigeria, etc. How’s that even possible?

The first professorship was in 1997 (Science Education and Comparative Higher Education, to give it its full title), and the second one was in 2012 (Media and Cultural Communication). Two totally different disciplines. I delivered an inaugural lecture for each in 2004 and 2014, respectively. Further, I am both a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Education (MNAE) and a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (MNAL) – a cross-over that is quite rare in Nigeria. A close friend says I am nuts to have two professorships. It’s okay; we used to call him nuts, too, when we were kids. I admit, though, it does take a bit of nuttiness. However, the whole ‘double professor’ thing came about by happenstance, thanks to the innovative, courageous Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, Vice-Chancellor, Bayero University Kano from 2010 to 2015, now Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission from 2016. Here is the whole backstory to the opera in one season of three episodes!

S01EP01: Liftoff

As a senior high school student, I had a target: to become a professor by 40. Given that I was born in 1956, that gave me up to 1996 to do my gig, exit stage left and hopefully seek new directions. Right from elementary school, I had wanted to work in a university after a visit to the house of then Malam Sani Zahradeen in 1966 on the old campus of Bayero University. Awed by the splendour of the house (and quite frankly, the wonderful breakfast I was offered), I decided right there and then the University will be my abode. I was ten at the time.

After going through the grind of schooling and finishing at Ahmadu Bello University, a degree in Science Education (Biology/Physiology) saw me getting employed as a Graduate Assistant in July 1980 at Bayero University Kano. The clock had started ticking – I had seventeen years to contact. I felt like I was in a cryogenic sleep capsule bound for a planet in the Betelgeuse star system, a mere 500 light-years from Earth. A confession, though. Education was not my preferred choice of Faculty at employment. It was the Faculty of Science. Made attractive by a blind ambition to become a research scientist – not a teacher. Plus, many top-notch teachers from the Department of Biological Sciences, ABU, my alma mater, had migrated to BUK during the period. I wanted to continue being their students because of their brilliance (fondly remembered, included Dr Shotter). But as fate would have it, I was employed in the Department of Education.

I did everything necessary to progress through the system, getting a DPhil at Sussex (courtesy of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission) and a Fulbright Senior Scholar residency at the University of California, Berkely, US. I also became a Resident Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center near Lake Como in Italy. Beautiful view, wonderful neighbourhood, made only grisly by the fact that the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1925 to 1945) and his wife (or was it mistress?) Claretta Petacci were executed at Dongo, near the Lake, in 1945. A gruesome tourist attraction whose grimness does not take away the timeless beauty of the area.

Finally, after submitting all the necessary papers for assessment, I was conferred first Associate Professor of Science Education and Comparative Higher Education in 1994, and with more publications, full tenured Professor of Science Education in 1997. I was 41. Missed the mark by a year. Due to the weird BUK politics at the time, the professorship was only announced in 2001 but suitably backdated to its proper date, October 1997. I immediately wanted to give my inaugural lecture, but I was asked ‘join the line’ of others who were to present – all six of them. Eventually, I was asked to come and give mine after three years. I did so on April 24, 2004. It was the seventh in the university. I had wanted it on my birthday, but considering that April 25, 2004, was a Sunday, I settled for Saturday.

When I reached the point of being promoted and awaiting results back in 1996, I found myself interrogating the rest of my life. At that time, university lecturers retire at the age of 65. So that meant I had about 25 years to retire in 2021 – a futuristic date then. I had also crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s in Education, at least as far as I could see. I found myself deeply involved in alphabet soup agencies – you know, USAID, DFID, UNICEF, NPEC, UBEC, WB, etc., mostly talking loudly and saying nothing. I simply can’t see myself day in and day out enmeshed in this process of eventually recommending things to the government through reports nobody bothered to read. If I didn’t find something to do, there was every chance of me becoming truly nuts.

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu wrote from the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He is, among many other things, the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

The academic world will never cease to amaze me. Let us look at just one example. Take an invitation to present a paper at an international event, as I was in June 2022. This particular event was the 90th commemoration of the establishment of Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. About 30 of us were invited, mainly from Europe and Asia, to share experiences on our various studies on orientalism from 29th to 30th June 2022. 

The trip was daunting for me, to begin with. It started with an hour flight on Qatar Airways to Abuja from Kano (my base). I spent another hour or so on the ground at Abuja before taking off for the six-hour flight to Doha, Qatar. I spent over four hours meandering around the terminal at Doha, waiting for the connecting flight to Warsaw. Eventually boarded the five-hour flight from Doha to Warsaw. All told, about 17 hours journey time. Arrived at the hotel jetlagged, weary and disoriented.

Off the following day to the University of Warsaw for the two-day conference scheduled at 9.00 p.m. each day. And it was right on the dot, with welcoming remarks by Prof. Piotr Taracha, the Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies UW, followed by an address to the conference by Prof. Alojzy Z. Nowak, the Rector of UW. These were followed by two keynote addresses, then appreciation of retiring members of the university community who had been there for over 50 years, including my host, Prof. dr. hab. Nina Pawlak (that’s how distinguished academic titles are labelled in most Eastern European universities). Let’s see what the letters mean; prof stands for professor, while dr is the doctor. To be a hab, however, requires extra efforts.  

To be awarded the academic degree of doktor habilitowany (habilitation), the candidate must have remarkable scientific or artistic achievements; submit a habilitation book which contributes to the development of a given scientific discipline; receive a favourable assessment of their output, pass a habilitation examination and deliver a favourably assessed habilitation lecture. It is after all this that they become professors.  

Nina Pawlak received her PhD in 1983 (Constructions expressing spatial relations in the Hausa language), habilitation in 1995 (Syntactic Markers in Chadic) and professorship in 2007. Thus entitled to prof. dr. hab. status. The habilitation is a post-doctoral experience that is highly formalized, represented by a separate thesis or a compendium of outstanding work in the area that can be evaluated as making an original contribution to knowledge. It takes between four to ten years to complete. Its public presentation is something like an inaugural lecture before a professorship. In most cases, the habilitation is the qualification needed for someone to supervise doctoral students. So far, in Africa, only Al-Azhar University in Cairo seems to offer this route to university scholarship.  

It is the habilitation qualification that will determine one’s path to professorship, but the publications required for skipping it to become a professor directly have to be more outstanding than the habilitation publication. This process shows rigorous respect for original contribution to knowledge in European scholarship. One can still be referred to as prof. dr. in recognition of their scholarship, without the hab. For instance, I was recognized as so by the European Union award of a grant to teach at the University of Warsaw in 2012. The prof. dr. title, used in mainland Europe and some Asian universities, acknowledges scholarship, even without the region-specific hab.  

Now back to the Conference. No ‘Chairman of the Occasion’, or Lead Paper presenter, nor ‘Royal Father of the Day’, etc. Just presentations. Now that brings me to my wonderment about the academic process. After over 17 hours of flight time (and same hours returning back), like everyone else, I was given 20 minutes (which included being harassed five minutes to the end by the moderator) to present my paper titled The Trans-Oriental Express: Receptivity and Cinematic Contraflows in African Popular Culture, and 10 minutes allowed for discussions – and that’s it! 

Thus, you spend weeks on fieldwork and data synthesis, spend hours being ferried from one location to another, and stay for days cooped up in a dingy hotel room (wistfully thinking about your own spacious personal living space!) eat some unusual and often very expensive food. All for 20 minutes of fame! This has been a recurring pattern in all the conferences I had attended.  

So, what is it about, at least international scholarship, that people would rather read what you wrote than listen to you? In Nigeria, paper presenters tend to ramble way beyond their allocated time. Often, the moderator of your session is worried about stopping you because you are a ‘big’ man, even if you are talking out of point. I remember one case in which the ‘Guest Speaker’ was reminded that his time was up as per the ‘program of event’ (sic). He adamantly refused to heed the time and insisted that since he was the main ‘event’, he would only stop when he finished reading the booklet of his lecture, which was 32 pages! Thank God for Smartphones – people just ignored him and shifted their attention to their WhatsApp messenger and came back to earth only after someone started clapping to signal their relief at the conclusion of the presentation! 

Perhaps it is time for us as Nigerian academics to move from this dense didactic approach to presenting papers – where you are often expected to give ‘theoretical framework’, ‘research questions’, ‘methodology’ (to appear ‘Scientific’ even if there is no Science in your conclusions) before you get to the actual data itself. And most annoying, you are also expected to give totally useless ‘recommendations.’ I had arguments with moderators and participants in Nigeria on the last point where I am asked about my ‘recommendations’ after my presentations. I often reply that I don’t have any recommendations – I present my data and my interpretation. How it goes is up to you. For instance, what can I recommend to a person who based their own narrative creativity on intertextual appropriation, thus creating a meta-narrative? That it has happened is fascinating enough. That I brought it to your attention is sufficient enough in knowledge discourses. In wider international scholarship, participants are more interested in exploring other aspects of your data.  

I think our approach to conference presentations in Nigeria has vestiges of the didactic educational experiences we were grilled through. Under such an academic ecosystem, all research is geared toward policy and governance. It is time for a paradigm shift – cut down the number of minutes on presentation, and focus on the epistemological virtues of the presentation! Oh, and cut-off the prof’s microphone when he seems about to torture his audience beyond his allocated 15 to 20 minutes!

Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu is the former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). He can be reached via auadamu@yahoo.com.

By Hassan Auwalu Muhamad

Former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University Of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu, has distributed textbooks to Ado Yola Memorial Special Primary School pupils in Tudun Madatai, in Kano Municipal LGA of Kano State.

Adamu, who has dual professorships in Education Sciences and Media and Cultural Communications, graduated from the same school in 1968.

Adamu said he distributed the books because Madatai Primary School was the foundation of his life — a driving force to advance his education that led him to attain two professorships from Bayero University, Kano, in 1997 and 2012.

In an attempt to encourage and support the young pupils to attain higher academic feats, and excellence, he thus distributed books.

The Head Teacher of the school, Mallam Abdulkadir Bature, expressed his appreciation and gratitude. He added that he had never been happier during his tenure as a Head Teacher of the primary school like today.

He also expressed his gratitude on behalf of the pupils and the entire staff members of Madatai Primary School.

More than 3,000 books were distributed at the school’s premises in the presence of the head of the Parents-Teachers Association, Ward Head of Sharfadi quarters, Mallam Ibrahim Auwal Uba and the Head of Parents of the Kano students of Kano Municipal LGA.