Communication

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu 

On Saturday, March 14, 2026, Dr Muhsin Ibrahim shared a newspaper report with me announcing the passing of Jürgen Habermas. The German philosopher died at the age of ninety-six in Starnberg, an affluent town in Upper Bavaria. Muhsin was well aware of how deeply I had drawn on Habermas’s theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere in my research on Muslim Hausa media cultures. 

His passing marks the end of an era in critical social theory. Habermas’s work on communication, rationality, and society made him one of the most influential philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as a major intellectual figure in postwar Germany.

Many Africanists did not initially read Habermas directly. Rather, they encountered his ideas through mediated theoretical engagements in the writings of scholars such as Brian Larkin. I myself first became aware of the public–private sphere debate as part of the broader Frankfurt School theoretical repertoire in Larkin’s studies of media culture in northern Nigeria. His work contributed significantly to later “post-public sphere” discussions by demonstrating how Habermasian insights could be adapted to different social, cultural, and technological environments.

Of Habermas’s many publications, the one that proved most decisive for me was The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Originally published in German in 1962 and translated into English by Thomas Burger (with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence) in 1989, it is an extraordinarily dense text. One often needs the guidance of someone already conversant with its arguments to appreciate its analytical elegance. 

I was fortunate to own a copy—purchased for me in the pre-digital era by Gillian Belben, then Director of the British Council in Kano. I read it several times before fully grasping how powerfully it provided a framework for understanding public reactions to Hausa films and the emergence of censorship debates.

Habermas’s study retraces the historical emergence of the bourgeois public sphere as a communicative domain distinct from the state, in which private individuals could assemble to discuss matters of common concern. By analysing the transformations of this sphere, he recovered a concept of enduring importance for social and political theory. In simplified terms, the argument draws attention to differentiated social spaces—those of the home and those of the wider public—and to the ways in which each structures particular forms of discussion and social interaction.

I relied heavily on this analytical distinction when I presented my first international seminar at the Institut für Afrikanistik, University of Cologne, on November 15, 2004. Titled “Enter the Dragon: Shari’a, Popular Culture and Film Censorship in Northern Nigeria,” the seminar explored how Hausa films often rendered visible aspects of domestic life traditionally regarded as private, thereby provoking moral anxieties and regulatory responses. By destabilising the boundary between the two spheres, Hausa cinema helped produce new forms of mediated public debate. A dramatic illustration of this dynamic emerged in the widely discussed Hiyana scandal of 2007, in which a private act became publicly circulated, with far-reaching cultural consequences.

The communicative arena that Habermas conceptualised as the bourgeois public sphere appears today in a historically transformed guise within the networked environments of social media. In Muslim societies such as those of northern Nigeria, digital platforms have intensified the long-standing negotiation between domestic moral order and public cultural expression. 

Conversations once confined to living rooms, mosque courtyards, or informal viewing gatherings now unfold in algorithmically structured yet widely accessible communicative spaces. These interactions do not reproduce Habermas’s ideal of rational-critical debate in any straightforward manner. Rather, they reveal plural, affective, and technologically mediated publics in which questions of religious legitimacy, gendered visibility, and cultural authority are continually contested. Social media, therefore, represent not the revival of the bourgeois public sphere but a new phase in its structural transformation — what might tentatively be described as a “third space.”

The world of critical social theory will undoubtedly feel the loss of Jürgen Habermas. Yet his conceptualisation of the public–private divide will continue to shape scholarly reflections on media, communication, and cultural change for years to come.

Readers interested in further discussions of the public–private debate in Islamic contexts may consult:

Kadivar, Mohsen. 2003. An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam. Social Research 70 (3): 659–680.

By Mukhtar Garba Kobi

Communication is one of the fundamental means people command, caution and interact with one another. It is as old as human beings because the first created beings (Adam and Eve) communicated. Primitive generations used so many ways in sending signals or messages to other people. They include beating metal gongs, lighting fires on hills, blowing flutes, beating local drums, firing Dane-guns, intense ululations, especially during marriage ceremonies, etc. Moreover, communication passed through generations. More advanced platforms and channels are created to enable people to interact with fellows in far and near places with ease from their comfort zones. 

Every day, sophisticated communication gadgets are invented and taken to markets. The more advanced features are added to social media platforms, the easier messages and information are conveyed to target audiences. According to Global Digital Overview, Facebook has 2.910 billion users, Instagram has 1.478 billion, Twitter has 436 million, TikTok has 1 billion, and WhatsApp has 2 billion active users.

With smartphones and data, people interact live through video calls, share pictures, upload movable images and audio messages, and get instant replies. Yet, despite these developments, youths in Africa and other parts of the world are so addicted to social media that some could not spend 30 minutes without logging in instead of studying for a better future, assisting parents with chores, learning skills to be independents, etc.

Regrettably, some users enjoy chatting in darkness by offing light, not knowing the brightness from phones screens harm their eyes. An eye doctor working with Makka Specialist Hospital in Bauchi, Abba Salisu Abba, explained that the pupil constricts when the light is more than what eyes can accommodate. But when the light is too low or in the darkness, the pupil dilates to search for available light. He further revealed that frequent staring at a light could result in itchy, watery, reddishness of eyes and, if nothing is done, could lead to blindness.

Some parents purchase phones, laptops, and tablets primarily to aid studies of their wards without regular supervision; it is unknown to them that most of their wards use such devices for irrelevant chatting or streaming pornographic content in late hours.

These days, young ladies in recent years shamelessly upload videos of them on TikTok dancing seductively in half-naked dressings; the act pushes some youths to rape teens, work sexually for sugar mummies or pay to satisfy themselves in brothels. Unfortunately, hours spent interacting with friends on social media platforms by students are high compared to the short time given for their studies or research; that has contributed hugely to mass failure during exams. A student from the State Polytechnic even told me that he often sacrifices his meal money to buy data primarily for chatting with friends. Sadly, many lost their lives after applying for jobs advertised on social media. They were pushed to early graves by their employers in unspecified locations. 

Shallow-minded adults and teenagers who heavily use social media platforms tend to believe whatever they come across and easily influence peers, thereby influencing them to snatch phones, kidnappings, or do other criminal acts to possess what celebrities have been bombarding them with on social media platforms. Consequently, most people in Nigeria believe that building crime-free societies is a collective responsibility, but only a few contribute in that direction. Parents no longer check the kind of postings, comments, pictures being uploaded or whatever their children are doing on social media platforms but are good at condemning others.

In summary, it is sacrosanct upon parents to be acting as watchdogs over the activities of their teenage sons and daughters on social media platforms. Parents should be collecting their devices and keeping them from them for days to know the messages coming in or people they are interacting with; this would help them determine the best decision.

Social media laws should work on all and sundry irrespective of positions, backgrounds or influences. The law should provide punishment for users sharing violent content, abuse, or false accusation to innocent individuals or groups to serve as a lesson to others. Furthermore, posting educational content on social media should be encouraged and youths doing that need to be rewarded by authorities; doing so would significantly improve students’ academic performances, thereby leading to good results.

Mukhtar Garba Kobi Wrote from Bauchi State.