Imam: In praise of competence

The output of this master storyteller and great pioneer of Hausa literature include: Ruwan Bagaja[The Elixir] the search for which, just like that of the Holy Grail or the Lilam Pari of early Bollywood, would take its protagonist to many a hilarious misadventure; the three-volume Magana Jari Ce [Eloquence is an Asset], or Art of Speech is a Capital, perhaps his magnum opus; his volume on travel writing, Tafiya Mabudin Ilimi; a production for the stage; non-fiction works on the Sirah of the Prophet [SAW], A History of the Companions [RA] of the Prophet [SAW], Hajj a Saukake [Hajj Without Tears] a treatise on Hajj, and Karamin Sani Kukumi, [A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing].

His capacity for hard work was legendary. In 1936, he spent six months working day and night in a stretch to produce the trilogy of Magana Jari Ce which became one of the leading classics of Hausa Literature. From the speculative fiction of Ruwan Bagaja to the imaginative writing style of Magana Jari Ce and his vivid reportage and editorialising in Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo, we see this great stylist at his best adopting and adapting different genres, domesticating unfamiliar exotic settings, and expropriating themes to make everything Hausa. After an Abubakar Imam translation and adaptation, a tale no longer sounds or reads like a translation anymore; it now sounds every inch original in style, in appearance, in register and in theme—and even in localisation. And, indeed, if he is to be celebrated, it should be for his masterful skill in superb translation and adaptation and not in the originality of his creativeness.

It is, no doubt, a great achievement for someone uninstructed in the art and craft of creative writing, which is different from the mere flair to write, to select, prepare, adapt, translate and create literary works of such everlasting value and literary merit. These works have entertained Hausa readers for ages; but more than that, they have influenced and instructed others in related disciplines. Once, for instance, I asked Alhaji Halilu Ahmed Getso, the Edward Morrow of Hausa broadcasting, how he was able to read text so perfectly as if he had a teleprompter not in front of him but right inside his head. He told me it was because of the practice that the reading and rereading, telling and retelling of the tales in Magana Jari Ce around Getso and neighbouring villages that have beaten his tongue, set his sight, focused his consciousness and coordinated his entire system to produce a near-perfect rendition of the material.

Yet despite all the gripping yarns he spurned and all the classical tales he told and all the pioneering creative works he wrote, sight must never be lost of the fact that his output and entire literary career, whether prearranged on purpose or exploited as afterthought, had been used, together with the likes of Gandoki, Ilya Dan Maikarfi, Jatau na Kyallu, to popularise and promote the use of Latin script as a replacement for ajami. It is indeed a thing of joy which Dr. Abubakar Imam, were he alive, would have welcomed, that Professor Abdallah Uba Adamu of the department of education in Bayero University Kano, has initiated and is leading the campaign for its revival and reintroduction.

But it will probably be none of the fault of this artist from Kagara, out of whom you could never take Zazzau where he finally made his home in a classical return to origin; but you could never know the origin of this man, for whom the entire expanse of the North was like family home.

Here was a Kanuri man changing his ethnicity like he would change his gown, a Babarbare who became Hausa, with some brothers and nephews becoming Katsinawa, Zagezagi or even Sakkwatawa in the midst of whom his grandfather headed the clan of the Nupe. Of his origins, he himself once told Dr. Muhammad Saifuddin Mora, his grandson, “If anyone cares to ask you about my history, tell him that my origin is in Sokoto, my genealogy is traceable to Borno, my place of birth is Kagara, and my hometown is Katsina—and my place of abode is Zaria.” So, what have you say or show him of Northernness?

This Bahaushe Mai Banhaushi, this zulqarnain of Kanem-Bornu and Sokoto empires, this teacher, writer, playwright, public servant that he was, was a genius in whatever field he tried his hands, as was true of the Northern individual of the past who could fit and excel in whatever role he was cast. His house became Northern Nigeria’s Bloomsbury, an intellectual watering-hole, a meeting point for religious, philosophical, political, and literary discussions on all sorts of topics and subjects, and its backdrop was used by the government a sounding board for developing or discontinuing policy options.

His fiction proved popular and influential, no doubt; but it was as a journalist that he had his greatest influence on the people of the North. He had been called ‘the political pilot of Northern Nigeria’ by the legendary Sa’adu Zungur, that true and all-rounded genius and intellectual patriarch of all Northern thinkers and men of letters; not as an accurate comment on his politics, because politics was really not his metier, but as a reflection of the enormous influence he wielded over the direction of issues and events in Northern society and politics as the editor of Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo [Truth at All Cost]. Whenever Sa’adu Zungur visited him, their meetings always ended up like the encounter between Muhyiddin ibn al-Arabi and Abu Sa’id ibn Abil Khayr. Their disciples comprehended nothing of what transpired between the two spiritual giants. At the end of it all, each group asked its teacher what he thought of the other; and each gave a very interesting reply: ibn al-Arabi said, “All I see, he knows;” and ibn Abil Khayr said, “All I know, he sees.” According to Dr. Mora, what Zungur and Imam discussed was pure Greek to the family and to all those within earshot.

Later Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo would become, in the pejorative words of its some of its more dedicated but dissatisfied latter-day professionals who had become disenchanted with the Afghanistanism of editors during the military era, Waskiya Tafi Kwabo. The watchword then was: kauce! But it was to the credit and it remained a great tribute to Mallam Abubakar that he would ever so adroitly dance to the rhythm of the moment without being an anarchist or a sell-out, and balance his journalistic exploits between the desire of the government to obscure, and the demand of readers to have to know, the truth. In this he never compromised, and to the end, he remained your idea of mutumin kirki and the very personification of mutunci.

His was not just development journalism; it was more like redemptive journalism in the medium of which he launched his energetic war—what he called “yaki da ‘ci’ uku:” against jahilci, zalunci and lalaci, ignorance, oppression and indolence. He used Gaskiya to mobilise public opinion in the North in the interest of development and in defence of the rights of the common man. He was particularly anxious to develop pride and patriotic consciousness in the Northern individual in the run-up to independence. He offered brave counsel and told bitter truth to those in power, and was never loath to pick and wield his mighty and scathing pen in defence of the powerless; and with his Bloomsbury colleagues and Northern elite spread across the region, he tirelessly worked as a giant think tank visioning and strategising for the North.

By every standard of greatness, Dr Abubakar Imam was a great man; but what made him special was his love of justice and that quality in him which made him permanently conscious of the hereafter and always seeking to avoid the terror associated and attached to the return to that Great Presence from Which we all came. In a dispute with his European partner in Gaskiya Corporation, it was all forced to come out. And he said it: ‘I have resolved in the Name of Allah Who took me away from the caves of Kagara and in His wisdom brought me to this place [that] I will serve this country so that when I die there shall be no blemish attached to my name.’