Stories behind the Veil - Kabafest

Kaduna Book and Arts Festival is a wonderful retreat that gathered writers from within and without Nigeria to discuss issues from the perspective of literature and the role this can play in human society.

Set against the backdrop Boko Haram insurgency, all the outsider can see is harrowing, raging inferno. But the calm, dignified ambience at Gusau Institute belied that. One couldn’t believe this was the place that was cluttered with the media cacophony of Boko Haram crisis. 

The Ghanaian Kinna Likimani was so excited meeting us from Ahmadu Bello University.  For her, Zaria was a fond memory, a memory that bathed her in joyful remembrance. As a child she was once in Zaria, she said, when her mother was a staffer with the university. 

The Sudanese author Leila Aboulela braved travel warning and made her first experience to Nigeria. Kaduna was a home to her; the presence of small Islamic cultures, of kettle in the bathroom and hearing of azan and sight of minaret. Her spirit was so uplifted that it made her remember with dark nostalgia her days in UK where she had so much missed those things.

Kabafest is a long overdue that many had been waiting with bated breath on top of annoyance and worry over lack of program with character and pattern such as this. It is a platform that showcased wealth of artistic talents and richness, opened up spaces for discussions, promoted cultures and literatures especially that of the northern part of Nigeria that hadn’t have English language as a predominant language of communication. 

Maryam Bukar Hassan on stage for the Night Poetry Performance

There has for long been a barrier in communicating artistic wealth of the northern region to the outside world despite the old-age existence of indigenous art-forms and literary culture in Hausaland that predated the European colonization of the Black continent. It is important to note that when we talk of literacy and restrict it to the ability to read and write in English language alone, the scope and perspective is narrowed to a smoke-screen and dangerous narrative.  

In Nigeria there are two literatures: the modern Nigerian literature written in English and the old-aged northern Nigerian literature in Hausa and Ajami, which retains its distinct form till date. 

Panel discussions were held with authors writing in English, and authors in Hausa language. One interesting discussion that was brought to the fore was the issue of women in northern Nigeria. The controversial novel Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim continues to generate heated debates for its portrayal of a “strange” relationship. 

Issues are very complicated, and often problematic. Women everywhere in Nigeria face unique challenges and difficulties. However, human failures in the north are seen and defined as hypocrisy. Meanwhile similar cases are conferred the status of human nature and simply dismissed as human foibles and weaknesses. Thus, the question was asked why shouldn’t the north tune down, or even get rid of religion, which places so much demands especially on women?  

Debates raged on the question of veil. Must a woman use long dark veil? Is the veil Islamic culture? These threads had received seemingly passionate responses and reactions, though by no means exhaustive. 

Individual is an amalgam of pieces and forces that birthed and shaped identity. It is troubling to dissociate humans from these bits, because it will look like seeking to erase identity off people’s lives - the social, historical and the cultural footprints. 

Societies are spaces and social entities, and like other social spaces and institutions, they have their codes and ethics, written and unwritten that govern them. Religion and faith are essential characteristics that define community. It is difficult to imagine human beings without identity; dress style, mode of relations and social norms. 

 

 Left to right on the Panel Discussion: Fatima A Umar, Carmen McCain, Hadiza El-Rufa'i and Balaraba Ramat

Appearance shouldn’t be an issue if we believe in the ability of the individual, because as Fatima A Umar argued, you are dealing with the person and their intellect, not dress or her faith, which will amount to belief in the humanity of the person. 

On the question of religion and women rights, author Aboulela shared the feeling most Muslims have. In Sudan she feels she’s a feminist, in the UK she found total equality too extreme and ended rediscovering her faith and becoming a devout Muslim. 

Muslim women writing for the world face enormous challenges. Professor Zaynab Alkali recalled her humiliating experience at Heathrow Airport immigration office, travelling to Amsterdam for book reading. Fatima Umar, the curator of jaruma magazine, the lifestyle ezine, faced tremendous racist and discriminatory attitudes at Lagos Law School that she had to transfer to Abuja for her program. 

 

Zaynab Alkali left, Kinna Likimani middle, Leila Aboulela right

Discussions there at kabafest are rich; spaces like these are extremely important in understanding each other, communicating our differences so as to avoid reckless eyeballing. I have a worry over the future of the festival if the current Kaduna State governor left office. My hope is the Yasmin El-Rufa’i Foundation and private individuals will find ways and work together for the continuance of the program.  But I hope that the program will become a state affair.

Melaye’s Book: the Nonfiction Work of Fiction

I laughed and laughed hard like many Nigerians at the news of Dino Melaye authoring and launching a book. The 600-page book is called Antidote for Corruption, offering ways of tackling corruption in Nigeria.

Representatives of anti-corruption agencies, however, were markedly absent at the launch. Other politicians who though ethically deficient but yet retaining some senses did not also attend the event.

The composition and character of those at the event would tell the nature of the gathering. In attendance were Senate President,  Bukola Saraki, former First Lady, Madame Patience Jonathan among other usual suspects in the corruption saga. 

Antidote to corruption should never have come from someone in this class of men to whom corruption is a second nature. How can a man who breathes corruption be prescribing anti-corruption pills? Lucifer himself preaching paradise. Subconsciously, Melaye is probably offering suggestions that will endear you to corruption.

What happened was ethically-challenged people gathered and worried and complained about pompous publicity that the anti-corruption fight enjoys. If everything would be quietly done, less hyped and sensational, that will be okay. Not entirely bad idea, but such suggestion should have to come from somebody with clean slate.

The crucial question, however, is where Dino has got the intellectual resourcefulness to author a book, any book, when a simple Google search about him will not reveal any record of him writing a work anywhere? Related searches about him reveal sentimental superficialities, conspicuous shallowness, blissful philistinism, corrupt and vulgar life-style and crude ostentation: Dino Melaye’s house, Dino Melaye’s cars, Dino Melaye’s video, etc.

Dino wants present himself as intellectually formidable, not knowing that he and his friends cannot rise above themselves. The only people he can intimidate are the non-reading minds, the ilk of Bukola Saraki who was overwhelmed by what he calls Melaye’s “resilience” for writing a voluminous book. Saraki judges intellectuality by voluminousness, not depth and substance.

The farce is so crude, pedestrian, and painfully mediocre that Nigerians dismissed it with scornful laughter. But Dino is not one with sense to realize the emptiness and the fundamental irony of his work. A bold liar who traffics in alternative facts and optional truth, despite the scorn and contempt that greeted his charade, even though  he is lying and knows everyone knows he is lying, the Kogi-West Senator can still go ahead to think himself as that smart guy who scammed the nation.

Everything surrounding the book stinks corruption and raises more and more integrity questions. Unavoidably prolix, the book must have been ghostwritten by a mediocre PA who Dino refused to mention.

The price of the book has yet called for another indictment. The essence of work is to be read. The book is tagged $131.57, fifty-thousand naira local currency. How could a writer who wants to be read put such ridiculously high price for a book meant for public good?

The whole business of launching the book was carried out in near secrecy. Points of sales digitally or otherwise were not disclosed. So far, one can tell with degree of certainty that not a single higher institution across the country has gotten a copy of the book.

Saraki-Melaye crop are group of people who approach truth and ethic if not with subversion, then with absolute indifference. The urge to lie without conscience in this sort of politicians is compulsive. They are greatly obsessed with publicity and fame that in as much as they get mentioned, they don’t mind whether they appear in negative light or not. This explains why they gathered and threw jibes at anti-corruption fight, and tried so hard without success to project themselves as honorable men and women. Otherwise they would have avoided this outlandish self-inflicted damage.

Melaye is not alone in this joke. He is the foreman of corrupt politicians who receded to the background to scam the nation. The result of that drama is an evident desire to escape their own lives, an expression of inner turmoil. They are mocked, they are ridiculed and held in contempt. They look at themselves and look at others and feel bad. They are unhappy with themselves and seem to be saying “we are not corrupt.” And the public seem to be replying “yes, yes, we agree fools.”

I see phony people pretending the dream of being men of letters they never would, thus inevitably gravitating towards where they belong to: corruption. Melaye’s book can best be described as what Timothy O’Brien called “nonfiction work of fiction.”

 

You can’t lose a bet not even Dino has bothered to read the book, for these people lack interest in anything beyond money, power and sex. He might have just okayed the final manuscript. I can imagine the scene in his room, Dino sipping beer, fingering a baby and waving off a pathetic PA.

Emir Sanusi II, Northern Governors and Other Stories

You may not know what droved Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II to depict the ugliness of our society in the open. Before his ascension to the throne, the Emir might have been speaking as a private citizen, from a detached position, with no contact with the real tragedy.

It is anger. It is pain. It is the deluge of human tragedies reaching him as a royal father. Daily, he sees supposedly normal humans do silly things. Daily, he sees incredible cases of irresponsibility. The radical, militant stances he took will make sense to you if you take a deep reflection, or imagine yourself in his shoes, or you experience one or two scenarios. One nearly feels like justifying the Emir’s action but for the channels, means and ways available to him.

The problem is deeper than we assume it on the media. It is sad and painful to admit, but our society is an eyesore and in terrible mess.

Of such irresponsibilities I have learnt recently is a man who divorced his wife for not dropping at his sister’s after visiting the area. Another man wanted to take a third wife through government-sponsored marriage, beat his wife with a fracture in her hand. He already has two wives living in different tenements. Feeding is no picnic, so also tenement paying. The first wife, who was beaten, did not object to his new marriage but argued that as pre-requisite for his marriage he should first of all assume his role as a father and start paying the school fees of his kids.

In a society full of people who can barely feed themselves, this man’s story is not the worst. Given a chance, each one of you can narrate thousand and one stories that will sure eclipse this.

I have hard time with the idea of being rough to women. Perhaps people who are willing to give up their male privileges and who can feel shocked upon hearing disgusting words said about women, or nasty action done to them, naively believe in the dignity of women. Someone asked me if I could wake my wife up and ask her to do things for me. Oh, you mean like a dictator? No, God forbid I become a despot or tyrant. Marriage is a partnership, not acquisition. We shall work and earn a deserved respect. But the painful thing is that women, even those who have been to colleges and universities, are made to internalize their oppression.

Emir Sanusi overlooked other great tragedies of human stories. What he overlooked is the plague of beggars and madmen in our streets. And the loss of young adults and adolescents to drugs – wasted humans, wasu sunci kai, wasu sunci rabin kai – largely due to parental failure.

When state failure is glaring, hopes must shift to community and individual. But we are confused. Maybe used to seeing the ugliness of our society made us internalize it and see it as normal. All that the Emir asked is a move along with time, that women need education to live a decent, dignified life even in marriage. For nothing, you need education to be a citizen of the 21^st century.

Lack of ambition and total confusion stand the society out. People lack techniques to survive the challenges of our time, they make almost no effort to acquire them, and when they suffer, they relate their suffering to God. That is the real tragedy, because if they know that their condition is unnatural, there can be hope of making effort to act on it.

The way people relate their suffering to God often makes me wonder: Has God hated us so much that He tests us so harshly than anybody? Blaming everything to God is simply a cunning way of avoiding responsibilities. Like believing that poverty is a good virtue. Or it is a sign of piety that will endear you to God. By being content with bare existence, one can see that there is something that kills ambition in our people.

We give birth to children and dump them to the mercy of luck and auto-pilot. As if we don’t really believe that we need good life for our sons and daughters. We fail to understand the simple fact that the more educated a boy or a girl becomes the more chances of better life, and the chances of swatting off irresponsible partners.

If your ancestors passed through a tragedy, and generations after them passed through similar challenge, like persistent female and child mortality, divorce and other social issues, and the same trend tends to befall you, then there definitely is something wrong. You have newer knowledge and techniques and newer, quicker access to them than your ancestors. For that, your ancestors should look at you admiringly and wish they were you.

Twenty-First century does not require only the ability to read and write. It needs more sophisticated techniques to enable one to solve complex human problems. The challenges facing humanity are blind to color, gender and belief and demand uniform skills from everyone. The reason why every child, male or female, should be educated. But the saddest thing is that in the next fifty years there would be some kids who would not be able to attend school as their parents do not attend today.

Who loses if the status quo remains?

Many may mistake Emir Sanusi’s new stand as cowardice. Their assumption cannot be dismissed outright. Careful observation, however, will reveal that the Emir’s stand is born out of a mixture of resignation and lost of hope in our people. But he does not lose if the status quo remains. Northern governors and their elite enablers do not lose; they are in fact beneficiaries of the hatch and breed system of the commoners’ kids that will swell the numerical strength of their votes.

The Emir was rightly indignant and tuned down. There won’t be rapid changes as he hoped for in a place where the visionless outweigh the visionary.  It will take a very long time before most people become aware of the horrible consequence the Emir is seeing now.

The sad reality in our society today makes it necessary that focus must shift to the self. Influence those who can still be influenced to get away from the grip of tyranny and exploitation.

Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II and the Debate of Social Reforms

In a speech at Bring Back Our Girls first annual lecture event, represented by his daughter, princess Shaheeda, last Friday, HRH Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II presented hard facts with brutal force. If previously unplanned, it seemed there was conscious effort this time to embarrass his critics, especially the elite class. He must be smiling after that lecture. The targets had been hit hard. By given more figures, he brutally punished them. Disturbing figures were reeled out which exposed the complicity, collective neglect and inaction of the region’s leadership.

In the first place Emir Sanusi must have been disappointed by stakeholders of the region, who obviously did not turn out to be cooperative to his reform mission in a possible background stakeholders meeting. He must have been angered by the amount of backlash his first speeches generated. Seemingly, he was surprised, even amused, by the rejection of his proposal by the masses, the very class he seeks to protect. Fact is truth backfires. People tend to reject truth when they perceived seeming tendency of denigration. Consequent to that he intended to shame the region and its leadership by going public with figures of the social ills of the region.  But it is obvious the targets are not the masses. The targets are religious, political and business leaders, but particularly the former groups who wield enormous influence. 

Emir Sanusi’s argument is on point, which many believe and are ready to support. We frequently run into conflicts at home over what we consider abnormal practices in family issues that are inconsistent with modern sensibilities. For instance, how can you marry four wives when you don’t have means to cater them? But the fault with Emir Sanusi’s line is the method, particularly his condescending tone and sheer arrogance. In Emir Sanusi's speech words walk looking over their shoulders, deriving pleasure at the successful hitting of the target and waiting joyfully for response for more and more data to be reeled out. It seems Emir Sanusi is more happy at this than fixing the issues. No one could tell.

Instead of using the right channels, he took to public platform and engaged in exchange of verbal bitterness with his subjects. The administrative structure of the Emirate provides an effective way of making policies and implementation. The Palace- through Hakimi, Dagaci and Mai-Unguwa - in collaboration with state and local actors can formulate policies and enforce them regarding issues he is trying to address like it is used in Polio Immunization program which thus far has recorded spectacular success.

To be conservative is not a bad thing. I will like to see newspapers, think-tanks and strategic organizations funded and operated by Conservative elements to defend their interests. Societies exist on the basis of opposition and conflicts.  Name-calling for holding certain views is certainly ineffective in winning public discourse. Instead of winning over hearts to his side, Emir Sanusi hardened more and more people and turned away fence-sitters.

Hard figures are real, however, fact exists in mind. While education serves as critical impetus for improved life quality, large number of adolescent women in marriage cannot be seen as social ills for a culture that sees chastity as virtue. Yet, we are not denying fact that no development for society where children are giving birth to children. The point is that marriage in itself should not be seen as problem.

Challenge must be mounted at some questions raised. For instance, what Sanusi and co., mean when they say 80% of women in the north couldn't read and write? Because to read and write means different things to different people. Do they mean reading and writing only in English language? Or do they mean general ability in the landscape of literate culture? We ask this so as to avoid confusing English, mere language, as knowledge and civilization. If reading and writing in English language only means knowledge, then a little decolonization is important here.

If English is defined as totality of culture and advancement, then what about people who read and write in other languages? What about other communities and nationalities the world over that thrive on their own language and define their life by their inherited values?

Hausa is the most massively written indigenous language and the most widely read language on continental Black Africa and beyond. Every single day sees the publication of books; the bulk of the authors are females. The swathes of readership are young and middle-aged women. Hundreds of thousands made reading these books their second nature. They read simply for the fun of it. They read in the kitchen, in Adai-daita Sahu; they utilize every single opportunity that comes their way to read these novels. Given this beautifully gigantic number, may we not beat our chest and proclaim that no other regions have the bulk of female readers than ours?    

What is worrying and what the northern Conservative blocks and not-so Conservative are resisting is an attempt in whatever form to denigrate them. Which they perceived in Emir Sanusi's manner.  Random men everywhere may have the habit of beating their wives, which is not limited only to the north, but the way Emir Sanusi made his case, scolding and paternalistic, in warning traditional rulers to stop beating their wives, you may assume beating women is the only thing every man is doing in the region.

Debates are not won on Channels TV and applauding social media audience. Persuasiveness as a leader is the simple, most effective way in changing people's mind. Going this way, Emir Sanusi is not like to succeed. It will be a big loss to miss the fruit of the reforms he intends to bring.