How controversy marred Hausa Writers day

Forget the fact that the country is in recession. Forget also, that the event was scheduled in the middle of the month for mostly salary-dependent participants, (citing the end of the month communal and social engagements of Nigerians as the reason); the second Ranar Marubutan Hausa ta Duniya (International Hausa Writers’ Day) was a success […]

Forget the fact that the country is in recession. Forget also, that the event was scheduled in the middle of the month for mostly salary-dependent participants, (citing the end of the month communal and social engagements of Nigerians as the reason); the second Ranar Marubutan Hausa ta Duniya (International Hausa Writers’ Day) was a success measuring by the number that turned up at the event.

Writers and the patrons of the art, (and readers, in this case) trouped into Katsina State from every part of the nation as well as from neighbouring countries to attend the event which held at the former Katsina State Government House from the 16th to the 18th of March; 2018. 

The event, which was conducted entirely in Hausa had the theme: Hoton Bahaushe a Cikin Rubutunsa (The Image of the Hausa Man as it Appears in his Writings). The objective of the event included, to produce about a thousand new writers with the intention of charting a fresh course for the promotion of the Hausa language and its literature, training emerging Hausa writers in the structural and grammatical aspects of writing in order to produce qualitative literature, encouraging reading among students in secondary schools, tertiary institutions and the public and to re-introduce early Hausa literature through book fairs and bazaars to the populace, among others.

The event started in the evening of the first day with a cultural night, where a cultural troupe and a number of performing artists entertained the guests, which included Prof A. Dangambo from Bayero University, Kano, the astute Prof Salisu Ahmad Yakasai from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto and the firebrand Prof Ibrahim Malumfashi from Kaduna State University, as the Guest Speaker, and Dr Saidu Ahmad Dukawa of the Department of Political Science, Bayero University Kano.

Dr Said Ahmad Dukawa, representing Dr Bashir Othman Tofa chaired the event the next day, Saturday, the 17th of March. 

Professor Dangambo first asked who is a Bahaushe (Hausa man)? What is his culture? What are his values and worldview? If we can answer these questions sincerely, then we can know who we are as a people. So many early and later Hausa poets like Sa’adu Zungur have composed poems about the positive and negative factors that characterise the real Hausa man, with a view to caution or encourage him. He then went on to explain how a group of Hausa people in the Diaspora, from about 15 countries have visited him, made him one of their patrons and informed him that they have undertaken the task of answering the question: who is a Hausa man, as well as find answers to other pertinent questions.

The guest speaker, Prof Malumfashi, in his speech, discussed talent and how it is divided into two: Common Talent and Gifted Talent. The gifted talent, he said can only be obtained genetically while common talent on the other hand, he explains, can only be obtained through the efforts an individual.

He also said the truth of creativity is that there is nothing new in our arts, everything is a replication of what someone has done somewhere before, and only God is the Creator.

He strongly believes that writers can only write from experience, citing an example with Ibrahim Sheme’s book – Yartsana (Doll), where the author spent some months in a village called Mararraba, along the Kano to Jos Road, and studied the prostitutes there and their ways of life. 

A writer can also be indirectly inspired through genetic transmission, that is, it is possible that somewhere along the line, someone among his or her ancestors might have experienced or practiced what the writer was writing about, so that is where the experience of being a prostitute is coming from.

There were murmurings and exclamations from various parts of the hall since the professor started, but at this point, half the hall rose in disagreement over the last part of the professor’s points.

There is also a view that at one time in history, the Hausa people might have interacted with the Greeks, because the well referred to as Akpa Well in the Bayajidda legend (Rijiyar Akpa) was actually a corruption of the Grecian word Aqua, meaning water. Later on, Hausa literature was also influenced by Arab culture due to religious interactions.

Professor Isa Mukhtar of Bayero University, Kano spoke on Salo. But the question here is, is it the writing that defines the style of a writer, or, is it the writer that defines the style of his work. Supposing you have been following a particular author because you like his style, will you be able to identify his work if you were to stumble upon it without the author’s name written on it?

The second question is, does style change? Does an author change his style, why?

Authors, especially Hausa authors, as experience has shown change their style, because of a change of ideology or age. 

Professor Balarabe Abdullahi focused on Wasan Kwaikwayo (Hausa Drama), his topic being: Hausa Drama: Yesterday and Today. He identified what drama means in the Hausa language. 

He reminded the audience that drama in the Hausa community did not start when the Hausa people started writing in Ajami (Hausa language written with the Arabic letters), though his focus here is on the written aspect of it. He said it started in 1898 when a German, Rudolf Frazier met one Hausa man from Kano in Maiduguri. The Hausa man told the German three stories in Hausa which Frazier wrote down in a drama form. This was followed by more written dramas in 1902, and in 1933, Dr East wrote six Hausa plays. These were the earlier written Hausa drama, which to some extent, recorded part of the Hausa culture of that time, though some of them have become extinct. The major theme of these dramas however, reflected on the cultural and social issues of that time, such as farming and husbandry.

Professor Dangambo, while summarizing the paper, mentioned that when they wanted to focus on drama in the literary program he airs on Freedom Radio Kano, they discovered that there has not been an improvement in drama unlike what is happening in fiction and poetry, while thousands of novels have been published in the last 10 years, that cannot be said of drama, and if care is not taken, Hausa drama will disappear. 

The event was dominated by performing artists right from day one, starting with the cultural night. We all know that once writers stage a literary event, it cannot be complete without reading from parts of published and unpublished works, short stories, comics and the recitations of Hausa poems, and everyone goes home feeling happy and elated. Some writers whose