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.
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.”
Vortrag
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.
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.
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.
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.
Adamu speaking at the Coronation Lecture of his highness, the emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, which Kano Emirate Council organized in conjunction with the Bayero University, Kano held at the Convocation Arena of BUK on Thursday, July 1, 2021.
While delivering his paper titled “Kano Emirate: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu argued that “Of all the grand emirates of northern Nigeria, none has the spectacular and expansive history and cultural anthropology recorded like the emirate, now the emirates of old Kano.”
In the historiography of Kano, Adamu traced that “Kano was founded in the 7th century by a group of wandering blacksmith seeking for iron ore from Gaya Town.” The versatile scholar used the typology of urban cultures developed by Fox (1977).
Adamu classified Kano as a ritual city, administrative city, mercantile city, scholastic city, colonial city, industrial city, and a bustling hub. He reiterated that it maintains the famous cultural jingle “Kano ko da me ka zo an fi ka”, loosely meaning: Kano is simply the best.
Despite its greatness, Adamu lamented the increase in crimes and other social vices in Kano, adding that “these are the characteristics of any prosperous urban state.”
In his welcome address, the Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Prof. Sagir Adamu Abbas, said that it was a privilege to choose the University to host this maiden lecture. “It was a wise decision to introduce a public lecture into the activities of the coronation as it signals [a] new archetype in the affairs of Kano Emirate Council.”
Abbas commended the decision of the Kano State Government to formalize the Coronation of Sarkin Kano as that “demonstrates love and commitment towards ensuring a stable society and hopes Sarki Aminu Ado will use this opportunity to move Kano and the traditional institution to greater heights.”
Also speaking, the chairman of the occasion, His Eminence, The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, reminded the audience of the significance of traditional leaders as the custodian of cultural heritage.
In his remark, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Dr Aminu Ado Bayero, the emir of Kano and the 15th Fulani ruling amir, described the relationship between Kano Emirate and Bayero University as that of “hanta da jini” [blood and liver]. Being a former student of Bayero University, mass communication programme, Sarki Aminu was delighted to see his former teacher, Prof. Cecil Blake, in the audience.
In his speech, the Executive Governor of Kano State, His Excellency, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, said the title of the paper presented by Prof. Adamu “is apt.” Ganduje expressed happiness with the current peace in Kano State when many northern states are fighting insecurity.
The event was attended by many politicians, academics, business people, traditional and religious leaders from and outside Kano State.
