Rahama, Kannywood and the war against romance

Last Sunday, the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN), the organisation that controls the Hausa movie industry or Kannywood as its popularly called expelled one if its female stars, Rahama Sadau. Her crime was that she was seen dancing in a video in which she fleetingly cuddled a man. The 22-year-old actress carried out […]

Last Sunday, the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN), the organisation that controls the Hausa movie industry or Kannywood as its popularly called expelled one if its female stars, Rahama Sadau. Her crime was that she was seen dancing in a video in which she fleetingly cuddled a man. The 22-year-old actress carried out the act in a music video of the musician ClassiQ who was launching his new song ‘I Love You’. MOPPAN’s secretary, Salisu Mohammed had released a statement on Sunday, October 2 citing Rahama’s appearance as an ‘immoral’ act and ‘a violation of the association’s code of ethics’ because she ‘appeared in series of visuals hugging and cuddling the music artiste.’ Rahama was expelled while in India receiving awards and accolades for her contribution to Kannywood.
The expulsion from the industry has created a huge debate in the industry as well as in the larger Hausa movie watching community. Some have supported the move as a correct way to enforce morality in the industry while others have criticized it as unfair because many other artists in the industry have done similar or worse things and have not been punished.
Rahama is only three years into her career, and became a star in a very short period. Indeed, the day before her expulsion, Daily Trust on Saturday 1st October 2016, the most widely-read newspaper in Northern Nigeria had carried a three-page flattering profile on her captioned “I Never Knew I Would Be So Famous”. Within 24 hours, she became infamous. One of the issues that emerged in the interview was that she successfully straddles both Kannywood and Nollywood.
I found it interesting that MOPPAN did not even invite her to defend herself. After persistent complains about their high-handedness, they subsequently agreed that she would be given an opportunity to defend herself on her return from India. The case might be more complicated than it appears to be. Sadau had earlier been suspended in May 2015 for six months by MOPPAN after she accused a popular actor and producer, Adam Zango of demanding sex from her for a role in his movie ‘Duniya Makaranta’. She later withdrew the accusation and apologised to him.
Policing morality has always been an important aspect of the governance of Kannywood and it is important to understand the background. In the 1980s, a major cultural revolution happened in Kano. A burst of creative writing emerged with dozens of new writers flooding the state with hundreds of “soyyaya” (romantic) literature also known as Kano Market Literature. In the 1990s, many of the novels were transformed into films and Kannywood was born.
Kannywood has been very different from Nollywood. It takes inspiration directly from Bollywood. Romance, singing and dancing governed its narrative in its earlier phase and persists up till today. It is a “feel good” production system in which the charming prince almost always married his beloved. In keeping with the dominant Islamic culture of the area, actors were always expected to be decently dressed and social mores depicted in the films must be presented in ways that are not considered offensive to the culture and religion of the zone.
The emergence of Kannywood was a cultural revolution because of its impact on social life. In an insidious manner, it started questioning the prevailing customs and traditions pertaining to marriage in Hausaland. It questioned the tradition of marrying off young girls to old rich and powerful men. It starting affirming the right of a girl to choose whom she wants to marry and it generated a debate about acceptable and unacceptable forms of intimacy. This frightened sections of the community and a war was declared against Kannywood by General Shekarau, then Kano State governor.
Shekarau’s war against Kannywood started with the appointment of Abubakar Rabo Abdulkareem, a conservative, to head the Film Censors Board, with a clear mission of destroying the industry. The opportunity to kill Kannywood provided itself in 2007 over what came to be known as the Hiyana sex tape scandal. A man had taken his phone for repairs and the nosy repairer opened stored video on the phone and discovered an eight-minute sex clip of Kannywood star Maryam ‘Hiyana’ Usman. Within days, the clip introduced Kano to the genealogy of the smartphone. Overnight, the ancient city decisively embraced blue tooth and infrared devices as hundreds of thousands of people transferred the clip to their handsets.
No-one asked the appropriate question of why good, well-brought-up Hausa people were paying a lot of money to see the image of a naked woman. What was unfortunate about the incident was that it turned out that Hiyana was drunk on cough mixture and was not even aware that her boyfriend was filming. No-one asked why a private act, filmed illegally, should be the basis for shutting down the industry.
The Kano State Film Censors Board came up with ridiculous regulations governing film production. All scripts must be vetted before shooting. Schedules and locations for shooting must be approved before production. The behaviour of actors and actresses were to be closely monitored by the authorities. All film companies that had a capital base of less than N2.5million were closed down. All actors were required to have post-secondary professional qualifications as a precondition for working in the industry.  Even technical crews without formal specialized qualifications were banned from further working in the industry. Kannywood was forced to move from Kano to Kaduna to be able to function.
The industry suffered from massive harassment. In March 2008 for example, the Kano State Hisbah Board raided the house of a popular actress, Zainab Umar and arrested her at 11 p.m. The Hisbah came with five truckloads of officers for the arrest and kept her in detention for 20 hours. They called her a prostitute and threatened her. Her crime was that she was not married and was not living in her father’s house. In explaining their perspective, the Assistant Commander-General of the Hisbah Board, Sammani Salga explained:  “According to Islam, film-making is legal but film-makers can do something unlawful in the process of making the film. What we want Hausa film-makers to do is Islamise their films.”
The agenda therefore was to transform Kannywood from an industry organised around love and romance into Islamic missionaries, a new vocation. In mid-2008, the war against Kannywood entered a new phase with the release of pamphlets from some conservative organizations.  The Shekarau administration started celebrating the end of “soyyaya” and romance in Kano.
It was nemesis that saved Kannywood from Governor Shekarau’s attempt to kill it. The Sunday Trust newspaper of 29th August 2010 broke the story that Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, the Director-General of the Kano State Film Censorship Board, was caught red handed apparently having sex with a minor on Sunday, 22 August 2010. Mysteriously, he was allowed to escape and leave the country before his trial began. The case was very embarrassing to the Kano State Government, and after the incident, Kannywood was left alone for a long time, saved from imminent death.
Ibrahim wrote in from Abuja.