On the Current Censorship Crisis in Kano, Nigeria

Iyan Tama on the day he was released. Courtesy of freeiyantama flickr stream. (Click on the photo to be taken to flickr)

On the Current Censorship Crisis in Kano, Nigeria

By

Carmen McCain, Coordinator, Hausa Home Video Resource Center, Bayero University

Nazir Ahmed Hausawa, Manager, Golden Goose Studio

Ahmed Alkanawy, Director, Center for Hausa Cultural Studies

The authors may be contacted at hausahomevideoresource@gmail.com

UPDATE: 26 January 2009: Appeal further delayed with chief justice says the case is “not listed.”

UPDATE: 22 January 2009 (see update on Iyan-Tama’s appeal being postponed here)

Nigeria’s northern city of Kano was until last year the home of a thriving film industry in the Hausa language. Hausa language “video-films” are similar to the larger “Nollywood” Nigerian film industry but are stylistically different from their southern cousins, with most films including song and dance sequences influenced by Indian films and hiphop music videos. In August 2007, a sex scandal involving a leaked cell phone video of a Hausa film actress Maryam “Hiyana” Usman having sex with her boyfriend Usman Bobo instigated a change in the leadership of the Kano State Censorship Board. The board had been instituted in 2001 after the implementation of Islamic shari’a law as a compromise measure between the filmmakers and the government. The censorship board enabled the films to continue being made but with some restrictions on dress and interaction between male and female actors. (The Kano State Censorship Board is a separate entity from the National Film and Video Censor’s Board which files and gives ratings to all films made in Nigeria. Hausa filmmakers are required to submit their films to both bodies if they want to sell their films in Kano State.)The scandal exploded onto an already tense atmosphere. Earlier in the year, four actresses had gone into hiding after hisbah,shari’a police, had interpreted a party in their honor as a “polygamous lesbian wedding,” and in June before the “Hiyana” scandal broke, A Daidaita Sahu, a Kano state agency for the “reorientation” of society, organized several book and film burnings.

In another rumoured political move, Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, one of the pioneers of the Hausa film industry, was arrested in May 2008 after his film Tsintisya, sponsored by the U.S. embassy, won an award for best “Social Issue” film at the Zuma Film Festival in Abuja. The actor, director, producer, and 2007 gubernatorial candidate was accused of not registering his company with the Kano State censorship board and for releasing the film Tsintsiya in Kano without passing it through the state censorship board. Iyan-Tama has receipts for his registration with the board (now uploaded to http://freeiyantama.blogspot.com) and had publically stated that the film was not for sale in Kano State, although a copy of the film, which an actor claimed was a personal copy, was confiscated from a desk drawer in a video shop during a police raid. Although on bail while the court case was ongoing, he was again arrested for a week in August. Most recently, on December 30, after a police witness who had been subpoenaed did not show up in court, the judge refused to reschedule the court date as the defense and prosecution had agreed and went ahead and to sentence Iyan-Tama to 15 months in prison and a fine of N300,000 [UPDATE–26 January 2009: specifically, the judge gave him a three month sentence along with a N300,000 fine, and another sentence of one year or an option of a N10,000 fine. See the blog of Abdulaziz A. Abdulaziz for more details], saying, according to Leadership reporter Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz, that “justice delayed is justice denied. Justice is three way traffic; justice to the accused, justice to the state and justice to the prosecution.” On January 12 an appeal was struck down because the court was not satisfied with the way it was prepared. Iyan-Tama is currently serving his sentence in the Goron Dutse Prison, Kano.

In addition to these prison sentences, there have been many other acts of intimidation against studios and lower profile film industry workers, including a requirement that each participant in the film industry, from actor to editor to video seller, register individually with the censorship board. So far, according to Ahmed Alkanawy, director of the Centre for Hausa Cultural Studies, over 1000 youths involved in the film industry and related entertainment industries “have been arrested in the name of shari’a and sanitization.” Among those arrested are “download and transfer business” workers who have been convicted for using cell phones for transferring Hausa music, audio and video, those who sell traditional medicine for advertising their wares over a loudspeaker and displaying of graphic photographs or drawings to illustrate their cures, those who run video gaming centres and football viewing centers without registering with the censorship board. However, although shari’a law is invoked, most “censorship”-related cases are being tried in a state magistrate court, a mobile court on Airport Road presided over by magistrate Mukhtar Ahmed. Defendants are often arrested and convicted within an hour, without the benefit of legal representation. Some are given prison sentences while others are given the option of paying a fine.

One case, which did not make it to court involved a hisbah raid on the home of Hausa film actress Zainab Umar and her sisters in March 2008. According to witnesses interviewed by reporter Nasir Gwangwazo, they were accused of living “in a house without suitable relation,” detained without food and water overnight in a cell with other men, propositioned by police, and warned not to speak with media. More recently, in November 2008, there was a sweep of arrests of industry workers. Following a mass protest by film actresses who publically changed political affiliation from the party of the governor ANPP to the majority political party PDP, police raided studios along Zoo Road, where most studios are located, closing studios and arresting 21 studio managers and other studio workers. Those who could not produce certificates of registration with the censorship board in the mobile court were given large fines. The November edition of Fim Magazine reported that Rabo had said there were specific film practitioners the court particularly wanted to catch and the magazine printed a list of 32 practitioners “in danger” of being arrested. (On the list were two of the co-authors of this report: Ahmad Alkanawy and Naziru Hausawa). [UPDATE 13 February 2009: In a 27 January interview with me, Rabo claimed that there was no such list and that what was being reported in the Sunday Trust and by Fim Magazine was “junk journalism”]  In December 2008, according to Fim Magazine with additional information from Ahmed Alkanawy, Director Rabi’u Ibrahim of HRB studio, whose name was on the list printed by Fim, was arrested and fined N80,000 for selling in his shop a DVD compilation with an “indecent cover” of the American television series  Desperate Housewives. His shop was closed and sealed for three days. When the authorities came to re-open the shop three days later, they saw the remaining copies of Desperate Housewives and the recently banned film Ibro Aloko, and he was taken back to court and given another N60,000 fine. He has not been allowed to re-open his shop since that time.

–13 January 2009

“Iyan-Tama: Another Case of Injustice: An Open Letter to Governor Ibrahim Shekarau” by Ibrahim Sheme, editor of Leadership Newspaper and publisher of Fim Magazine on his blog http://ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com/

“Court jails CNPP chief over illegal films.” by Guardian reporter Adamu Abuh. 31 December 2008.

“Writers, Film-makers Defy Censors” by Amina Koki Gizo on IPS News, 12 September 2008,

“The War Against Film-making” by Nasir Gwangwazo, Leadership, March 2008.

“Press Release: Brief report on the state of film industry in Kano State, Nigeria” by Ahmad M. Sarari (National Vice President MOPPAN), 28 February 2008.

“Taking on Nigeria’s Islamic Censors” by Andrew Walker, BBC. October 2007.

“Censoring movies and books in Kano: text of press release by Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim” posted by Ibrahim Sheme on his blog, 25 September, 2007.