A Possible World with journalists as grammar offenders
One of the attention-grabbing aspects that thrill me about some Nigerian novelists and indeed Africans literary writers is their concern about societal ills that have been eating our moral, social, political and economic fabrics. The imaginative writers take their valuable and precious time to creatively pen down gory pictures of the menace and sometime provide […]
One of the attention-grabbing aspects that thrill me about some Nigerian novelists and indeed Africans literary writers is their concern about societal ills that have been eating our moral, social, political and economic fabrics. The imaginative writers take their valuable and precious time to creatively pen down gory pictures of the menace and sometime provide apt solutions in an imaginary ways. Recently a friend who knows what I adore handed me a tome, A Possible World, to digest.
A prolific academic writer, Aliyu Kamal, wrote the book. He has five other interesting titles, two of which are anthologies of poem and short stories. The most recent, A Possible World is a paperback text that contains forty-seven chapters is incomparable because it touches on almost all sectors that any citizen who cares about the events around him/her would have been lamenting especially in a typical Hausa community like Kano.
The Professor from the Department of English and French Languages of Bayero University, Kano selects his characters skilfully and assigns them with befitting status and roles. The principal characters (Mujahid Yusuf and Umma Kasim) symbolise hope and serve as crusaders for the establishment in order to help in creating an ideal society, where everyone would like to dwell.
The author shows that even in a society where immorality, indecency and lack of respect for the socio-cultural and religious values are not observed, there are some upright people who have not been seduced by the so-called Euro-American definition of civilisation, which is projected by the media. Such people according to the book are Mujahid Yusuf, a graduate of Ethics who has the vision and mission to reform the society by public enlightenment. Mujahid tried to signify the saying charity begins at home. He commits so much to reform his brother who is involved in illegal drug consumption and nocturnal patronage of brothels.
Mujahid as an obedient son obeys his mother’s proposal to marry her friend’s daughter (Umma) who is studying Mass communication and shares many ideals with Mujahid. The ambitious chap works patiently in an enlightenment agency despite what I call “over-employment” of its director who does not have the qualification to head the place.
Though the book ends without telling the audience whether the crusader had married and settled down in order to establish a possible world, the massage in the book is clear. It preaches and advocates the need for total societal re-orientation in Kano and the federation at large.
Critiquing the book from different angles viewed by those who saw it as an Adai-daita Sahu novel, I think the author depicted journalism practice in Nigeria, through his major character (Mujahid), as a profession who strictly adheres to the grammatical rules of English language. He said Mujahid loathes patronising Nigerian newspapers because “neither the editors nor the news-story writers had very good English”. To me this is a simplistic understanding and analysis of the Nigerian media industry. There are good editors and writers who can compete with any grammarian but that does not mean there aren’t rotten hands.
The author also wittingly or unwittingly advanced the unscientific and parochial assumption reportedly attributed to the former President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo that Sociology and Political Science graduates are either irrelevant in the society or unemployable because what they studied is not seen as education.
Whatever the shortcomings of the book, the author expressed the urgent need for the youth, especially graduates who are employed by government agencies, to discharge their duties diligently for a possible society.