Tag Archives: Dr. Ahmad Sarari

Kannywood Awards 2016

Posted on March 14, 2016 | 5 comments
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Nazifi Asnanic and Ali Jita on the red carpet at the Kannywood Awards 2016, 12 March 2016.

I had the privilege to attend the 2016 Kannywood Awards held at the NAF International Conference Centre in Abuja  Saturday, 12 March 2016, the third incarnation of the awards organized by Sarari Klassique Merchandise and Halims Entertainment Galleria. (See my post on the 2013 awards.) I was impressed by the space, which was in a well-decorated and sophisticated auditorium. The red carpet TV presence included Rayuwa TV, Noma TV, Unity Entertainment, NTA, VOA, Voice of Nigeria and others.

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on the red carpet.

I dislike taking pictures in conference settings under muddy lighting, and the flash on my camera is broken. Therefore, almost all of my photos are pretty bad. I’ve seen some amazing ones on Facebook taken by photographers like Sani Maikatanga. You can see more photographs at Kannywood Scene. I’ll post a few here, mostly for people who asked for copies.

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Director of the Kano State Censorship Board, Afakallah at the Kannywood Awards, 12 March 2016. (Quite a change from Rabo…)

The awards were MC-ed by Waziri Zuaibu of NTA, and Aisha Mohammad of the EFCC (!). Memorable moments include a tribute to the late Aisha Dan Kano; a stylishly-dressed Nafisa Abdullahi’s touching speech thanking her mother after she won Best Actress for her role in Baiwar Allah, and Sadik Sani Sadik kissing the ground when he received his award for best actor in Bayan Duhu, a 20+ minute speech (I was recording) by the minister of Information, and a short and sweet speech by Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, Vice Chancellor of the Open University, following a really fantastic little 3-4 minute documentary on the beginnings of Kannywood.

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Tribute to the late Aisha Dan Kano.

I was impressed by the efforts to make this a unified Nigerian affair. Indeed the theme was “Patriotism through Entertainment.” In the musical soundtrack, I heard (pre-recorded) music by Ziriums, Sani Danja, and Jeremiah Gyang (a Christian Hausa singer.) There was an opening prayer by a Muslim and Christian, and, in addition to the various ministers and representatives of governors, there were representatives from Nollywood and even of an Ijaw youths association. Emeka Ike, the president of the Actors Guild of Nigeria gave out awards and spoke out saying that the stakeholders meeting recently held in Lagos (which invited no one from Kannywood) had been “hijacked” by outside interests. In one of the musical performances, Sarkin Waka sang “Mu Zauna lafiya, we are one,” and was joined on stage by many of the stars.

There were also performances by  Ziriums, Abbas Sadiq, and Nura Bond.

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Ziriums performs at the 2016 Kannywood Awards, 12 March 2016 (c) Carmen McCain

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Ziriums performs at the Kannywood Awards, 12 March 2016. (c) Carmen McCain

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Abbas Sadiq performs at the 2016 Kannywood Awards. (c) Carmen McCain

Three special awards were given at the beginning of the ceremony: The special Kannywood Merit Award, went to His royal Highness Malam Awwal Ibrahim, the Emir of Suleja; a Posthumous Life Achievement Award went to the late Tijjani Ibraheem; and another Kannywood Special Merit Award went to Malam Sunusi Shehu Daneji, a scriptwriter and magazine publisher who coined the term “Kannywood” in 1998.

Although certain moments like the (actually quite informative) speech by the Minister of Information dragged on, the audience kept themselves amused with photo taking,selfies, and wandering around chatting.

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photo-taking (c) Carmen McCain

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Abbas Sadiq working the aisles. (c) Carmen McCain

 

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Filmmaker, author and publisher Ado Ahmad Gidan Dabino (c) Carmen McCain

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Producer and scriptwriter Nasir Gwangwazo at the end of the night (c) Carmen McCain

The winners of the awards (alongside the other nominees) are as follows:

Best Film

Hindu, produced by Garba Saleh – WON

Gwaska, produced by Falalu Dorayi

Baiwar Allah, produced by Naziru Dan Hajiya

 

Best Cultural Film

Na Hauwa, produced by Kabir Ali Mpeg – WON

Hindu, produced by Garba Saleh

Malam Zalimu, produced by Abba El Mustapha

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Na Hauwa, produced by Kabir Ali Mpeg wins Best Cultural Film. (c) Carmen McCain

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Kabir Ali Mpeg holds the award for the Best Cultural Film that he produced. (c) Carmen McCain

Best Director

Ali Gumzak, for Baiwar Allah – WON

Adam Zango, for Gwaska

Ali Nuhu for Da’iman

 

Best Script

Yakubu M. Kumo, for Bayan Duhu – WON

Yakubu M. Kumo, for Baiwar Allah

Shafiu Dauda Giwa, for Ban Gantaba

 

Best Actress

Nafisa Abdullahi, for Baiwar Allah -WON

Jamila Nagudu, for Na Hauwa

Rahama Sadau, for Halacci

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The Minister of Information presents the Best Actress Award to a teary Nafisa Abdullahi, 12 March 2016.

Best Actor

Sadik Sani Sadik, for Bayan Duhu -WON

Adam A. Zango, for Gwaska

Ali Nuhu, for Nasibi

 

Best Supporting Actress

Fati Shu’uma, for Basma -WON

Ladidi Fagge, for Da’iman

Fati Washa, for Hindu

 

Best Supporting Actor

Lawan Ahmad, for Da’iman – WON

Sadik Ahmad, for Nasibi

Ali Nuhu, for Rumfar Shehu

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Lawan Ahmad (middle) with his award for best supporting actor in the film Da’iman (c) Carmen McCain

 

Best Comedian

Sule Yahaya Bosho, for Rumfar Shehu – WON

Sule Yahaya Bosho, for Gidan Farko

Rabilu Musa (RIP), for Dangas

 

Best Villain

Haruna Talle Mai Fata, for Farmaki -WON

Adam A. Zango, for Hindu

Tanimu Akawu, for Kasata

 

Best Child Actor

Maryam Baba Hasin, for Basma  – WON

Ahmad Ali Nuhu, for Uba da Da

Shema’u Salisu, for Anisa

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At only five years of age Maryam Baba Hasin wins best Child Actor Award for her role in Basma.

 

Cinematography

Mr. D’mej, for Hindu – WON

Mr. D’mej and Ismail M. Ismail, for Gwaska

Murtala Balala, for Baiwar Allah

 

Best Editor

Ali Artwork, for Gwaska – WON

(no name), for Mulamat

Husseini Ibrahim, for Baiwar Allah

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Ali Artwork poses with his award for best editor and me.

 

Best Visual Effects

Muhammad Ali, for Hindu – WON

Musa Zee Moses and Muhammad Ali, for Anisa

Ali Musa Dan Jallo, for Bori

Best Sound

Suraj A. Ibrahim and Mustapha Auwal, for Gwaska -WON

Fahad Abubakar, for Fansa

Bello Minna and Mukhtar Dauda, for Hindu

Best Music

Umar M. Sharif, for Uba da Da – WON

Umar M. Sharif and Isa Gombe, for Gwaska

Nura M. Inuwa, for Hindu

 

Best Set Design

Tahir I. Tahir, for Hindu – WON

Muhammad Sani G., for Bakin Mulki

Saif A. Nuhu and Ishaq Ahmad Nuhu, for Halacci

 

Best Costume

Jibrin Cha, Sunusi Shamaki, and One Eye, for Hindu -WON

Umar Big Show, et al, for Gwaska

Sunusi Shamaki, for Bakin Mulki

Best Makeup

(guess which makeup artist won….? 😉 )

Alhaji Suji, for Hindu

Alhaji Suji, for Bakin Alkalami

Alhaji Suji, for Nasibi

 

 

 

5 Comments

Posted in African cinema, Hausa film, Kannywood, Nigerian film

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Governor Ibrahim Shekarau on Hisbah, censorship, and Kannywood in the Presidential Debates

Posted on March 19, 2011 | 4 comments

For those who did not see the Nigerian Presidential Debates, between General Muhammadu Buhari, Nuhu Ribadu, and Governor Ibrahim Shekarau, you can watch the debates online, here:

I have transcribed the questions Governor Shekarau was asked regarding the hisbah, censorship, and Kannywood during the debates. Emphasis in red mine:

Timecode: 42:56

Moderator: Now Malam Shekarau, Nigeria is a plural society and yet in the state that you govern, Kano State, the hisbah, which is the morality police, is known to brutally enforce sharia and in the process sometimes trampling on people’s rights as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution. How do you reconcile this intolerance with your desire to be the leader of a country as diverse as Nigeria.

Shekarau: Thank you very much. In the first place, I do not agree that the hisbah was brutalizing and overriding the constitutional right of our citizens. We did not just wake up and create the hisbah without going through the legislation.  We used the same constitutional provision that allowed any state to create any policy, any program, any law that will maintain law and order within the state. The hisbah is no more than what today you call community policing. We have the hisbah in virtually every community. Their duty is to ensure there is peace, there is law abiding, and this is exactly what they do. It is those who violate the rules of the land, and we did challenge anyone, whoever thinks that the hisbah has done anything to him contrary to the rules and regulations that rule the land to take his case to the law courts and challenge the creation of the hisbah. So we didn’t just by the wave of a hand create the hisbah, it went through the legislation. There was law promulgated. In fact, the first item on the law of the hisbah is that the hisbah is to assist the Nigerian police in the maintenance of law and order.  (Clapping)

Moderator: Now, you say that but in practical terms the impact of the hisbah in Kano has included killing a film industry that was providing employment, what is known in Nigeria as Kannywood. So there has been an exodus of filmmakers out of Kano, who get harassed when they are on shoots, who have been asked to submit their scripts for inspection, and a total disregard of the people’s rights to express themselves through art in that particular way.

Shekarau: No, I think that is totally wrong. The hisbah has nothing to do with the censorship. We have a full fledged censorship board, created by law through the legislation. And the censorship board has created rules and regulations that govern the conduct of any film industry. We have a right to decide what is right for the community. The government has the moral responsibility to protect the right, the interest, the instant transformation (?) of the society. (Clapping). So all we did, all we did, we said, if you want to register and run a film industry, you should comply with A,B, C, D, F, and we told anybody who feels any of these rules and regulations contradicts the provision of the  constitution of  the Federal Republic of Nigeria should challenge us in court, and nobody has done that anyhow.

Moderator: You seem to be very strong in terms of protecting the rights of the majority. What about the rights of the minority inside the state that you govern.

Shekarau: We are protecting. In fact it may interest you to know that Kano state today is the most peaceful state in Nigeria. If you ask any of the so-called minority or non-indigene, they are quite happy, they are quite peaceful. In fact, today, you will be surprised to find that those you call non-indigenes or even the non-Muslim prefer to go for settlement of disagreement within the community either to the hisbah court or to the censorship board. We don’t have any problem at all. The rules are working. The society has accepted it. The film industry is thriving very well. All we say is abide by the rules and regulations. And there is no community that will live without guiding principles, without rules and regulations and will think that there will be discipline and order in that community.

Although I thought the most impressive performance in the debate came from the moderator, Kadaria Ahmed, who had no qualms with interrupting these “big men” with hardtalk style questions (and would gladly vote her for president if I had a vote), from the feedback I saw on Facebook and Twitter, the majority opinion seemed to be that Governor Shekarau “won” the debate. He did speak eloquently and seemed well-prepared.

However, in terms of his response to the questions above, one might want to keep in mind a few things, and I will focus here only on what I know about the government’s interaction with the film industry, and leave aside the question about the hisbah, whom I’ve heard praised for their intervention in police corruption as well as railed against for alleged “abuses”.

Shekarau claimed :

“we told anybody who feels any of these rules and regulations contradicts the provision of the  constitution of  the Federal Republic of Nigeria should challenge us in court, and nobody has done that anyhow.”

And

“We don’t have any problem at all. The rules are working. The society has accepted it. The film industry is thriving very well.

From my observations of the interaction between the Kano State Censorship Board and the Hausa film industry based in Kano (and, most recently, in Kaduna) for the past three years, these statements, especially the claim that there has been no legal challenge to censorship implementation, are a bit disingenuous. Below find copied a list of blog posts I have written since 2009 on legal challenges that have been made either to the Kano State government, the Kano State Censorship Board, the Kano State police, and or the head of the censor’s board in his personal capacity.

Here are just a few examples.

On 12 February 2009, I posted an interview with Sani Muazu, President of the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria, about the various lawsuits against the Kano Censor’s Board that MOPPAN was involved in. He told me:

Well, you know, we started this whole process of going to court with our case on Hafsah when it was arrested in the market, and we challenged the authority of the Kano Censors Board to do so. We have since then initiated another suit against the Kano Censors Board, as a national body, that is MOPPAN, challenging the legality of the board as well as bringing out the issues to do with conflict between the National Film and Video Censors Board and the state Censor’s Board as enacted by the state assembly. It is interesting that ever since we did that, we expected the Kano State censors board to allow status quo to remain until when these issues were clearly explained by the legal authorities. But the state censor’s board has gone on to arrest our members indiscriminately without any cogent reasons.

On 16 February 2009, I posted another interview with Dr. Ahmad Sarari, the then Vice-President of MOPPAN and brother of the filmmaker Hamisu Lamido Iyan Tama. Iyan Tama was at that time in Kano’s Goron Dutse Prison after being sentenced in a mobile court for supposedly illegally selling his Zuma-film festival award winning film in Kano. (Iyan Tama has since been cleared of all charges). In addition to my questions about his brother’s case, which you can read by clicking on the link, Dr. Sarari also spoke about the court cases MOPPAN was involved in:

What principally we needed was an injunction restraining Kano State Censors Board from attacking, harassing, humiliating and imprisoning our members. We dragged four bodies to the court.  One is National Film and Video Censor’s Board for issuing a license to our members which gives them the right to exhibit, to sell, and show their films throughout Nigeria, yet a particular state attacks or arrests them for doing that, and they have not come out and said anything. Is the registration they issue our members fake or does it not have jurisdiction in Kano? So here I’m saying there’s a clash between the national and the state jurisdiction of two boards. What we understand in accordance with discussion with our lawyers is that when there is a clash between state and federal law, the federal law takes precedence, so does the interpretation of that in the court. We dragged the Kano State Censors Board to court for its action. We dragged the DG of the Kano State Censor’s Board for the guidelines he issued out which we believe are quite unconstitutional. They contradict some fundamental human rights because the guidelines are too stringent and are quite unbearable. And we dragged the speaker, Kano State House of Assembly for allowing the section of the law establishing the board which contradicts national law. We need them to review the law. We have to look at the laws establishing the board because most of them contradict national laws.  That’s why we dragged the four of them to the court.

The case was going fine in the court. We brought our evidence. They said we had to exclude the DG of the censor’s board out of the case. Our lawyer vehemently defended that he had to be in. They said we had to include the Kano State government. We said we sued Censor’s Board and the state house of assembly, because the state assembly are the lawmakers, so Kano State Government is automatically included in the case. He slated 26 of October for the final ruling of the case, and unfortunately [Sarari laughs]… there was this strike [of court workers]. They just resumed this month. So we are just urging our lawyer to find which date are they going to give, and we are very much hoping that the ruling is going to go in our favour.

On 27 March 2009, I sat in on a case in which the Federal High Court struck down the objections filed by the Kano State Censorship Board to MOPPAN’s lawsuit.

The last I checked, this lawsuit is still in the courts, two years later.

There have been other lawsuits, such as the one posted by Iyan Tama in a personal capacity over alleged defamation of character by Abubakar Rabo Abdulkareem, the Head of the Kano Censor’s Board on DITV, Kaduna. The case was settled out of court.

On July 21, 2010, I reported that a lawsuit was filed at a Kaduna State high court:

between the applicants 1. Ashiru Sani Bazanga, 2. Mohammed Rabiu Rikadawa, 3. Aliyu Abdullahi Gora, 4. Sulaiman Sha’ani, 5. Musa Aminu, 6. Jamilu Adamu, 7. Abubakar Sani, 8. Tahir I. Tahir, 9. Tijjani Asase, 10. Yusuf Haruna, 11. Yakubu Lere, and 12. Adam Zango and the respondents 1. Commissioner of Police, Kano State; 2. Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Kano State, 3. Chief Magistrate Court 25 Kano, Kano State; 4. Abubakar Rabo. The applicants are seeking damages of Ten Million Naira as compensation for the “violation of the applicants fundamental human rights.”

The Kaduna lawsuit was filed after Kano State Police were sent to arrest the above named filmmakers on an accusation that they had supposedly sent the DG of the Kano State Censor’s Board, Abubakar Rabo Abdulkareem, a death threat by text message. Aliyu Gora II, the editor of FIM Magazine, was the only one the police were able to find, and he spent nearly a week without trial in Kano’s Goron Dutse prison, after being transported by police from Kaduna to Kano. The suit was the latest in a series of lawsuits following Rabo’s alleged defamation of the Hausa film industry on DITV Kaduna.

Other Posts, in chronological order, that may be of interest in learning about the relationship between the Kano State Censorship Board and the Hausa film industry:

On the Current Censorship Crisis in Kano, posted13 January 2009

Kano State High Court Chief Justice Postpones Iyan-Tama’s Appeal posted 22 January 2009

2:15am Raid on Iyan-Tama’s Family posted 23 January 2009

Iyan-Tama’s Case Not Listed posted 26 January 2009

Triumph/Trust Editorial Convergences posted 29 January 2009

Interviews with Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Director General of the Kano State Censorship Board, and Dr. Ahmad Sarari, Vice President of the Motion Pictures Practitioners Assocation of Nigeria posted 30 January 2009

The Mysterious Asabe Murtala/Muktar Writes Again posted 10 February 2009

Interview with Sani Mu’azu, President of Motion Pictures Practitioner’s Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN) posted 12 February 2009

Interview with Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Director General of the Kano State Censorship Board posted 13 February 2009

A Surprising Move by MOPPAN, and my friend Sulaiman Abubakar (MPEG) arrested on Tuesday posted 15 February 2009

Interview with Dr. Ahmad Sarari, Vice President of MOPPAN and brother of Iyan-Tama posted  16 February 2009

More Arrests along Zoo Road yesterday, and my article on Iyan Tama makes IPS front Page posted 17 February 2009

Update on the Iyan-Tama Case: Bail Hearing set for 5 March posted 19 February 2009

Updates on the Iyan-Tama case and other articles on the crisis in Kannywoodposted 14 March 2009

Iyan-Tama granted bail, The Judge calls for a new Trial posted 17 March 2009

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

Federal High Court strikes down Kano State Censorship Board’s objections; MOPPAN’s Lawsuit will go on posted 27 March 2009

Mobile Court bans listening to 11 Hausa songs posted 8 June 2009

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

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

Breaking News: Singer Ala denied bail posted 7 July 2009

My notes on the court case of Aminu Ala today at the Mobile court attached to the Kano State Censorship Board posted 7 July 2009

Aminu Ala given bail on condition that he does not speak with media posted 10 July 2009

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

The latest on the Iyan-Tama case from Nigerian News Service, plus new fees from the National Film and Video Censor’s Board posted 2 October 2009

Kano State Censorship Board shuts down Kano Music Festival hosted at Alliance Francaise, Kano posted 28 February 2010

Update: 3-day international music festival cancelled by Kano State Censor’s Board posted 1 March 2010

French Ambassador rejects the conditions of KS Censorship board for lifting ban on music festival, Punch reports posted 3 March 2010

Arresting the Music. Arresting Hope. Arrested for playing at a wedding “without permission” posted 11 March 2010

Interview with Hiphop artist Ziriums in this week’s Aminiya posted 18 April 2010

FIM Magazine Editor Arrested on accusation of Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, DG of Kano State Censorshop Board posted 4 July 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 21 July 2010

Iyan Tama takes Rabo to Court for Defamation, and Other Lawsuits posted 18 August 2010

DG of Kano Censors Board Caught in Alleged Sex Scandal with Minor, Sunday Trust Reports, posted 29 August 2010

Press Release from the Motion Pictures Practitioner Association of Nigerian (MOPPAN) Calling for Investigations into the “allegations of  Sex Scandal against Abubakar Rabo,” posted on 31 August 2010

The Latest on the Iyan Tama Case from Nigerian News Service, plus new fees from the National Film and Video Censor’s Board, posted 2 October 2010

Iyan Tama Reaches Settlement with Director General of the Kano State Censorship Board, posted on 17 October 2010.

4 Comments

Posted in Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Hausa film, Iyan-Tama, Kannywood, Kano, Kano State Censorship Board, Law in Northern Nigeria, Nigerian film, politics, Sani Mu'azu

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Interviews with Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, Director General of the Kano State Censorship Board, and Dr. Ahmad Sarari, Vice President of the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria

Posted on January 30, 2009 | 3 comments

Dr. Ahmad Sarari, Vice President of MOPPAN, at Cannes 2008 (c) Ahmad Sarari

Dr. Ahmad Sarari, Vice President of MOPPAN, at Cannes 2008 (c) Ahmad Sarari

Before I go into more detail about my interviews with the director general of the Kano State Censorship Board and with the Vice President of MOPPAN, Dr. Ahmad Sarari, let me just give a quick update on the Iyan Tama case, which Dr. Sarari told me about. He said that the judge didn’t want to just “quash the judgment already done by the previous judge,” so he suggested that they “should compile a fresh new appeal” (which they did the following day). “So the latest development now is the constitution of the station panel, which will review the case and look at the previous judgment of the case and come out with a final conclusion, a final verdict on the case.” Dr. Sarari said that the advantage of this “special panel of jurists” would be that “if something comes out of that sitting, there will be no case to appeal for Iyan Tama. He will just be out pending on the termination of the final judgment.”

 

I asked him about about the thirty day deadline Justice Mukhtar Ahmed had given him on December 30 to appeal his sentence, and asked if this continuous delay of the appeal by the court would affect that. Sarari answered that he had discussed this issue with the lawyer. “He said that has no impact on the constitution of this special panel. Because that is we were afraid of, because Iyan-Tama has already been almost 28 or 27 days in prison, so we have two to three days for the time to lapse.”

(For more background information on the censorship crisis in Kano, see this post.)

Now for some of the other details of the interviews: 

I interviewed Alhaji Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim on Tuesday January 27, 2009. I went with a journalist I met last week, and “Malam Rabo,” as he is called here in Kano, kindly welcomed me to his office and allowed me to interview him after he said azahar prayers. I’m a bit embarrassed I wasted so much of his time (over an hour and 8,500+ words), but though he grew a bit impatient towards the end (I really did keep asking too many questions…) , he answered almost all of my exhaustive list of questions. He was quite gracious, but as the interview went on I could see that he is passionate about his calling to protect “Hausa-Fulani culture from illicit and alien influences.” He shed some more light on the Kano State interpretation of Iyan Tama’s “crimes.”

 

The most unfortunate part of the interview was that my digital recorder cut out at one point without me realizing it had gone off. And, excruciatingly, it cut out on the most important questions I was asking him, namely about the Iyan Tama case. Fortunately, I usually take extensive notes, so I was able to reconstruct the main gist of what he said. I will place here a summary of what he said about the Iyan Tama case, which will hopefully not conflict with the copyright of the two articles I am writing from these interviews. 

I asked him about several points that confused me about the case

 

1)Iyan Tama was charged with not having registered his company with the censorship board, but he has a receipt for registration with the board dated 2008, which anyone interested can view at http://freeiyantama.blogspot.com.  

Malam Rabo answered that a receipt for payment was evidence of payment for the registration but is not the registration certificate itself, which requires further paperwork, letters from the bank, local government area etc. He asked me if I had a receipt for application to the university whether it would be proof of my admission, and then said, “of course it wouldn’t be.” He claimed that Iyan Tama had refused to follow up on the initial payment with the rest of the paperwork.

 

2) I pointed out that Part IV, item 16 of the 2001 Censorship law, which he says is the law under which filmmakers are currently being tried, says that “no films produced or issued by the diplomatic representative of a foreign country will be subject to censorship law.” Iyan Tama’s film Tsintsiya was sponsored by the U.S. embassy, so why is it being tried for not having been censored under this law? 

Malam Rabo answered that this was only one part of the law and that elsewhere there are other specifications for how to gain exemption from censorship. He said that to receive this exemption, you must apply to the board. He also said that the law was intended for non-profit educational type projects and that Iyan Tama’s film was a “purely commercial venture” and was not exempt under the law.

 

3) I asked him about how Iyan Tama had made public statements about how his film was not for sale in Kano. Why was he being held responsible for copies of the film which may have been smuggled into the states and sold by unrelated marketers? 

Malam Rabo basically said that if Iyan Tama did not want to be responsible for the films sold in the state, then public announcements were not enough. He had to communicate officially with the board about that.

 

From Malam Rabo’s office I went immediately to Klassique Productions, the office of Dr. Ahmad Sarari, elder brother (same father) of Iyan Tama and Vice President of the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria. Dr. Sarari is an extremely kind and gracious man. He was trained as an epidemiologist in Russia and worked for years in a hospital. It was only a few years ago that he quit his job to focus on full time filmmaking—a pursuit the censorship crisis has greatly affected. I waited in his office while he did the La’asar prayers, and was particularly interested in a trophy sitting on his desk from the Kano State Censorship Board. When he came back in from his prayers, I asked him about it and he said that Iyan Tama had also received several awards for the Censorship Board for making good moral socially constructive films.

 

I asked him to respond to what Malam Rabo had said about Iyan Tama’s case. He said

1) In the issue of the receipt. It was true that there were other materials that Iyan Tama was gathering for the registration, but that he was in the process of acquiring materials that took quite some time to receive from banks and local government areas. He pointed out that almost all of the filmmakers in Kano were going through the same process of gathering files. Iyan Tama had also earlier told us, when I visited him in prison the first time, that the censorship board had not released certificates to anyone by the time he was arrested in May 

2) Dr. Sarari said that the law did make the provision for the exemption of films sponsored by foreign development agencies, but stated that in Iyan Tama’s case this law was not even relevant, because Iyan Tama had decided he would not release the film Tsintsiya in Kano State. One of the reasons for this was that Kano State had a ban on singing and dancing in films and there was singing and dancing (“though moral singing and dancing” Sarari hurried to point out) in Tsintsiya (as any good adaptation of West Side Story, not to mention Hausa film would!). So, whether he could have legally released the film in Kano State or not, he chose not to release it at all and made announcements on radio stations and in major newspapers that the film was not for sale in Kano State.

 

3) When I asked him about Malam Rabo’s insistence that there must be an official communication with the censorship board about the film not being released in the state, he responded passionately, asking what was Iyan Tama’s business with the censor’s board if he had entirely produced, exhibited and released the film outside of Kano state, and had the approval and support of agencies like the National Film and Video Censors Board and the National Film Corporation. Just because Iyan Tama is a “Kano man” does not mean he cannot go elsewhere to make and exhibit his films, he argued. “Why does he have to come inform the censor’s board that “I want to release my film in Kaduna.” Where is their area of jurisdiction? Their area of jurisdiction is Kano, right? am I right? So, they don’t have the power beyond Kano, and he released the film outside of Kano. So he wouldn’t have had to come inform the board, I want to do this and that, since he has no business to do in Kano.” 

Finally, when I asked him about Malam Rabo telling me about there being multiple places where the film was found in Kano, Sarari said that he had been at every court case and that the censorship board had not been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any marketer had received the film from Iyan Tama. He clarified that the copies of the film they had used in court were impounded from CD Palace, the shop owned by HRB Productions. But they had not been in the counter or in the main shop area; the police had broken into an office and found a few copies of the film in a desk drawer. These particular copies belonged to the actor Baballe Hayatu, who was the star of Tsintsiya, and he had been given copies of the film for his own personal use.

 

There was much more to the interviews with both gentlemen, but I will let it rest there for now, and I welcome either of them to leave comments on this blog if they have any corrections or additions.

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