DG of Kano Censors Board Rabo caught in alleged sex scandal with Minor, Sunday Trust reports

Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, DG of the Kano Censor's Board, at a conference on indigenous language literature in Damagaram, Niger, December 2009 (c) CM

Today’s Sunday Trust reports that Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, the director general of the Kano State Censorship Board, was allegedly caught last Sunday, 22 August 2010, in a compromising sexual situation with a minor and has since left the country for Saudi Arabia. According to Ruqayyah Yusuf Aliyu in Sunday Trust:

The Director General, Kano State Censorship Board, Malam Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim has been allegedly caught in a sex scandal involving a minor, following an alleged incident along Maiduguri Road in Kano metropolis last Sunday, August 22.Reports indicate that Rabo was allegedly with the girl in his car late in the night when a police patrol approached. He panicked and fled on high speed, eventually knocking down a motorcyclist around the Na’ibawa area. He was allegedly apprehended by a mob that vandalized his car before the police intervened.

The police took him to Hotoro Division where it was discovered he was a top government official. He was then released on bail.

A police source informed Sunday Trust that some incriminating evidence pointing at a possible sexual relationship between Rabo and the girl was found in his car. “When the car was searched, the police found the girl’s pant but you know, when such issues involve big people in town, it dies a natural death but he was actually arrested for alleged sex relationship with the girl as well as for hitting a moving bike,” the source said.

Rabo, during interrogation, allegedly told the police that the girl was his niece and he had fled the scene when the police approached because he suspected they might have been thugs sent after him by actors in Kano.

"Rabo arrested for sex related offence" Breaking news article by Ruqayyah Yusuf Aliyu on director general of Kano State Censors Board in Sunday Trust, 29 January 2010, p. 31

[[UPDATE 30 August 2010: When I first posted it, I missed that there was actually another article posted on 29 August 2010 by Edwin Olofu, “Censorship Chief Escaped Lynching for soliciting sex from Minor” for NEXT. There are another two articles in today’s Leadership and on the Nigerian New’s Service.

Edwin Olofu of NEXT provides more details, including that apparently the motorcyclist Rabo knocked over was a member of the Kano State History and Culture Bureau and that Rabo was allegedly parked behind a shopping complex with the girl, he claimed was his neice:

Mr. Abdulkarim, the former Hisbah commander was trying to escape from a patrol team which had accosted him when they saw his car parked in a secluded environment – with a young girl inside – when he ran into a motorcyclist. Other members of the Okada union quickly surrounded him and he was only saved a lynching by the police who had been in pursuit of his car.

[…]

Mr Abdulkarim, who insisted that the girl he was found with was his niece, said he was not having an affair with her. But when the former enforcer of Sharia law discovered he could not convince the contingent of policemen on night patrol on the propriety of having an under-aged girl in his car at such an odd hour, he panicked. The whole thing looked even more suspicious because for some curious reason he had parked behind a shopping complex along Maiduguri Road that night.

A police source said when the patrol team attempted to arrest Mr Abdulkarim he took flight in his car.

Double trouble

While trying to escape however, he knocked down an official of the Kano History and Culture Bureau who was riding on a motorcycle. This incurred the wrath of Okada riders, who thought that he had knocked down a member of their union and promptly proceeded to give him a thorough beating.

Ironically, it was the patrol team that he had been trying to avoid that finally came to his rescue, although by then the okada riders, who saw he had a girl with him, had damaged the car and were already on the verge of beating him to death.

He was later taken to the Hotoro police division where he was made to write down a statement.

"Kano Chief Censor in Alleged Child Abuse Scandal" by Abdulaziz Abdulaziz in Leadership, 30 August 2010. p. 2

Leadership’s Abdulaziz A. Abdulaziz in “Kano Chief Censor caught in alleged child abuse scandal” also writes on the event, including the detail that the police supposedly used their sirens while chasing him through Kano:

The Director-General of Kano State Censors Board, Malam Abubakar Rabo Abdulkareem, is enmeshed in a case of an alleged illicit sexual affair involving a minor whom he allegedly abused.

Though it is unclear whether the chief censor had actually penetrated the girl or not, investigations by LEADERSHIP revealed that he was trailed penultimate Sunday in Kano by patrolling policemen who saw a car parked around a bushy area along Maiduguri road by Rukayya House, in Kano around 10 p.m.

The police on patrol beamed their vehicle’s light on the parked car and the DG, who was in the car, started the car and zoomed off to escape the approaching vehicle. LEADERSHIP learnt that the police used the siren of their vehicle to alert the DG that they were trailing him but he refused to stop, engaging the police in a car race.

Rabo raced frantically through the Eastern by-pass road and through Unguwa Uku quarters with the police trailing him. This led him to ram into a motorcyclist around Unguwa Uku Shago Tara. He, however, forged ahead accelerating the vehicle.

It was learnt that the motorcyclist he ran into was wounded, as a result of which some other commercial motorcyclists joined the police in trailing the director general. They subsequently caught up with him around Filin Kashu area of Unguwa Uku.

The angry mob of motorcyclists began to beat the DG, while some aimed at the car, causing serious damages to it, before the arrival of the police who dispersed the people and arrested the driver, who turned out to be Rabo.

The director general was then taken to the Hotoro Police Station where he identified himself. On searching the car, according to a LEADERSHIP source, a young girl was found in the car, and a pant, suspected to be the girl’s. Rabo claimed that the girl was his cousin and he was coming from his family house. He was released at the time.

[…]

He also appealed to the journalists to let the matter die as exposing it amounts to ridiculing Islam.

Rabo’s argument, according to a clip of an interview with him obtained by LEADERSHIP, was that the whole drama was a set up to blackmail him by PDP stalwarts in the state who had been looking for a way to eliminate him. He said those people had been meeting for about three weeks at Shagari quarters, on how to nail him.]]

Readers may remember that Rabo, was appointed to his current position at the censorship board in 2007 where he cracked down heavily on the Hausa film, literature, and music industry, after a scandal involving a private cell phone video of a Hausa actress, popularly known as Hiyana (after her most successful film) having sex with a lover. He has long made statements of concern about the effect of Hausa films on minors, women, and Hausa culture. In the interview I conducted with him in February 2009, for example, he pointed out the reason that women in the film industry have to have permissions of their guardians to act:

A freelancer in the industry who can be a lyricist, a musician, especially the womenfolk by our culture, by our tradition, by our religion, has to be under the custody of her parents or guardian, because of what we call historical factor. They were abused. There were [cases of] domination. There were a lot of sexual abuse cases to be handled by the board. That historical factor, that nasty experience made the board to assume the social responsibility to ensure the dignity of the womenfolk is to protected in this act. So this is why we say she will be brought to us as somebody certified by her guardian, you understand, so that if we absolve her, nobody will see her as a prostitute or a harlot because they have been passing all these nasty allegations by the larger society, and we can’t stand for her even in a court of law if somebody abused her by saying she is a harlot. [….] I am referring to teenagers, 13, 14, 15 year old girls in her puberty period, during her youthfulness, during her maybe promiscuous period, people will harass her. Some of the stakeholders who are her seniors will harass her or rather will force her into forced sexual whatever, you understand. We are responsible, the government is responsible to ensure things are not done in an exploitive way sexually.

In a Sunday Trust article from 16 February 2010 “Kano Film Censor’s Board shuts 15 Shops” Rabo is quoted as saying films on the history of history of the Prophet Yusuf were of danger to

“under aged children who can easily be influenced are also involved in hawking such films along the streets without knowing the implications. He also said the ban was as well in the interest of potential customers who might not get to these children even if they found the films were bad.”:

[[UPDATE 31 August 2010: And in a piece written by Rabo and published on the Kano State Censors Board site, he further voices his concern on the “corrosive influence” of Hausa films on children:

Is civilisation synonymous with decadence? Is obscenity a buzzword for freedom? When there is freedom of expression (which covers the right to produce and circulate works of art, films and literature), does it take away the responsibility of parents and guardians to safeguard their wards and sheen them from corrosive visual influences? What gadgets or navigational instruments are at the disposal of these overwhelmed parents in the face of rapidly transforming technology of mass production and ease of viewing? The advent of video technology brought with it urgencies and tough challenges. In the past, you could physically prevent young boys and girls from going to watch a film at the cinema hall if you feared they would be exposed to immorality. With video technology the devil has been piped into the home and corruption is only a click away. Kano is a conservative Muslim Hausa society whose people are comfortable with their religion and cultural heritage. I say conservative because Kano people would love to sieve the impurities from the values being transmitted by the newest art forms.]]

Rabo is currently embroiled in several court cases, including one in which a court in Kaduna issued a warrant for his arrest for contempt of court when he refused to appear in court after a court summons in a case in which he was accused of slander. Following his arrest warrant he accused Hausa filmmakers of sending him death threats by text message (similar to his protest here that he was fleeing the police because he thought they were filmmakers). Kano State police traveled to Kaduna, where they arrested Fim Magazine editor Aliyu Gora II, and kept him in prison for nearly a week without appearing before a judge. The Kano State police were later fined N100,000 by a Kaduna High Court for not following due process.

Rabo is not the only one who has allegedly recieved death threats. Ibrahim Sheme reported on 14 August 2008 that Leadership editor in chief Sam Nda-Isaiah recieved a death threat over the paper’s coverage of the activities of the Kano State Censorship Board.

The zealousness of the police in the case of Gora, against whom no evidence could be found in the near week that he was held in prison, is particularly ironic, considering that Rabo, who was apparently witnessed by dozens of police and okada riders in a compromising situation with a minor, as well as a hit-and-run incident, was allowed to board a plane for Saudi Arabia the next day. (Considering that, according to NEXT, Rabo was given a “thorough beating” following the hit-and-run incident, it must have been a very uncomfortable trip.)

Hausa filmmakers on location gather around to read the Sunday Trust article "Rabo arrested for alleged sex related offence" (c) CM

I will post more updates on this case, as they become available. In the meantime, here are other relevant posts from this blog that provide information on the director general of the censor’s board.

Iyan Tama takes Rabo to Court for defamation posted on 18 August 2010

Kaduna State Filmmakers Association take Kano state Police, Court, and DG of Kano Censor’s Board to court over breach of fundamental human rights posted on 21 July 2010.

FIM Magazine editor arrested on the accusation of Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, DG of the Kano State Censorship Board posted on 4 July 2010.

Plagiarism of Me and the DG of the Kano State Censor’s Board Speaks out posted on 22 May 2010

Update: 3 Day international Music Festival cancelled by Kano State Censor’s Board posted on 1 March 2010

Kano State Censor’s Board bans films on the history of Islam and the prophets and shuts down 15 shops posted on 16 February 2010

DG of Kano State Censor’s Board taken before shari’a court posted on 5 August 2009

Arrest of singer Aminu Ala and the most recent scuffle of MOPPAN with the Kano State Censorship Board posted on 6 July 2009

Recent news on the activities of the Director General of the Kano State Censorship Board posted on 24 June 2009

Federal Court Strikes Down Kano State Censorship Board’s Objections; MOPPAN’s Lawsuit will go on posted on 27 March 2009

Raids on a Film Set last weekend and other developments in “Kano State Censor’s Board vs Kannywood” posted on 24 March 2009

Updates on the Iyan-Tama Case and other articles on the crisis in Kannywood posted on 14 March 2009