Abdalla Uba Adamu

Bayero University, Kano · Information and Media Studies

The interface between Islamic Shari'a and Hausa cinema in Kano, northern Nigeria.

The multiple translations of the Thousand and One Nights in various languages across the world ignore the existence of the Nights in African literature. Yet the easy mutability between the Thousand and One Nights and the oral literature of the Hausa of northern Nigeria prompts the question of whether the tales in the Nights not Arabic but rather Af...

This chapter analyses the 'Diploma Disease' (Ron Dore) phenomenon in Nigerian education system. It argues that this 'disease' -- the overwhelming emphasis on acquisition of certificate at the expense of qualitative learning -- had its roots in the 1969 curriculum conference in Nigeria which fashioned our the National Policy on Education. This event...

Studies on the Poetic Dynasty of Musa Ɗanƙwairo (2023) was the proceedings of the 30 years commemorative conference on Musa Ɗanƙwairo (1907-1991) the late great Hausa poet and griot from Sakkwato.

Hausa Ajamī, the use of Arabic alphabet for non-Arabic language writing, has been developed as a form of discourse by Islamic clerics in Hausa city states since the advent of Islam in the region through Malian cleric merchants in the 14th century. Although not widely spread, it nevertheless provided those fluent in its script with a literacy device...

In this Keynote, I looked at the popular culture in these countries in principally four domains: literature, music, cinema and social media. My focus was on how Islam constitutes an important factor in the cultural production of popular culture, and what makes it distinctly different from other forms of production that are not regulated by Islamic...

Anthony H. M. Kirk-Greene. Mutumin Kirkii: The Concept of the Good Man in Hausa. Bloomington: African Studies Program, Indiana University, 1974. 41 pages. This booklet is a reprint of the third annual Hans Wolff Me­morial Lecture of 1973.

The paper explores the historical trajectories of counterflow migration to Kano city in northern Nigeria. The principal focus was on Arab and Middle Eastern migrants over a period of hundreds year -- long enough for them to integrate with the indigenous population and form distinct African identities.

The relationship between internet and newspapers have attracted the attention of many media researchers. Most of the research however, neglected a vital component of newspaper production, which is the physical distribution channels. This paper investigated how the advent of the internet affected newspaper street vending in a cosmopolitan area of Ka...

The classic text published in 1969 by NNPC Zaria, Nigeria on learning Ajami and Arabic.

This paper interrogates the changing paradigm in the evolution of traditional African proverbs in the postcolonial setting in which Hausa youth create proverbs centered around the power of both social media and their technologies. In this context, the notion of colonized subjects, cowering under the glare of English linguistic imperialism, is chall...

The Great Soyayya Debate was a series of public debates about the then emergent Hausa language creative fiction from 1991 to 1999. This happened pre-Internet on the pages of newspapers, mainly New Nigerian Weekly, under the guidance of Ibrahim Sheme. The column was New Nigerian Weekly Literary Supplement: The Write Stuff. The debates were kicksta...

List of 869 authentic traditional Hausa names, and 132 Arabic/Islamic names domesticated by the Hausa

"Status of Open and Distance Learning in Nigeria" reviews current policy and practice in relation to issues of access, equity, quality and costs. This was done using a survey of ODL institutions, data from different institutions, and available studies conducted by COL. The report identifies innovations and best practices that institutions adopted a...

The liberalization of the broadcast media in Nigeria has provided ample opportunities for individuals to convert the usual ‘market square’ rhetoric into electronic sphere where opinions are aired without abandon. The freedom inevitably led to opportunities for disinformation which were essentially propaganda narratives meant to mislead. Such disinf...

Muslim societies, regardless of geographical location, are based on Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh, which is the process by which different Muslim populations interpret the sharia, the divine law that Prophet Muhammad received from God. It is this law that prescribes the production and consumption of creative arts in these societies. This chapter a...

This chapter explores how rap singers from both Nigeria and Niger Republic articulate their identity through multi-lingual lyrics in a single lyrical performance, while partaking in the transnational rhythm of American rap music beat. By using popular rap music structures (often sampled from well-known, often free, online sources), the artistes sit...

A condensed history of Kano

Islamic calligraphy is an entrenched literary and artistic expression in the Arab world. Consequently, it carries with it some ethnographic baseline assumptions of the significance and place of art and artistry in the Arab world. The migration of Islam to African countries did not carry with it the cultural baggage—at least in terms of arts and aes...

Ignatius Chukwumah, ed. Joke-Performance in Africa: Media, Mode and Meaning. London: Routledge Contemporary Africa, 2018. xi + 290 pp. Illustrations. £120.00. Cloth. ISBN: 978-1-138-06064-7. - Abdalla Uba Adamu

This chapter textually analyses how a few tales from the Nights were re-translated, in effect intertextually transmutated as African tales in Hausa language of northern Nigeria in 1930s by Abubakar Imam in what is considered by the local intelligentsia as the quintessential Hausa storyline. The adaptation was done so skillfully that it was only in...

Encyclopedic entry on Teenagers in Nigeria in contemporary times

Encylopedic entry on Hausa music genre and its styles

Culture is an expression of artistic and ethnographic portraits of the human condition. It is often captured perfectly through the medium of film, not only as entertainment, but also as a means of preserving a cultural heritage. Film production will usually have a profit motive, but in African film cultures this often comes at the expense of the ar...

This chapter analyzes the process of transnational film dubbing and the linguistic and cultural filters used to domesticate the Hindi film dialogue into Hausa language. It traces the history of the Hindi‐Hausa film remakes first as cinematographic strategies and, later, with increasing economic downturn, to a shift in marketing both Hausa‐language...

This chapter draws attention to the core challenges faced by globalization of media identities in traditional African societies. It specifically focuses attention on the delineation of female space in Nigerian Muslim Hausa entertainment ethos with particular reference to Hausa video films. The increasing availability of media technologies to Muslim...

Edited by Sa’idu Ahmad Ɓaɓura & Nura Ibrahim, the idea for this Festschrift came as a result of an international conference on Transglobal Media, Knowledge Transfer and African Identities organized in honor of Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu for his dual professorship, hosted by Bayero University, Kano in conjunction with African Identity Group and Fre...

The virtual addiction of Muslim Hausa youth to Indian films has a long history, which stretched to the first Indian films screen in northern Nigerian cinemas in the 1960s. The cultural convergence between what the Hausa see as representations of Indian cultural behavior - in terms of social mores, dressing, social interaction -All served to create...

Generally, images in art forms occupy a controversial position in the Islamic world. The Sunni branch of Islam, considered more conservative and strict does not approve or condone representational art of the human form for fear that it would eventually turn into an object of worship. The Shi’ite branch of Islam, however, has a radically opposing pe...

The current study underscores the importance of environmental ethics as a vehicle for engaging society, businesses, and policy-makers towards mainstreaming transformation to sustainability. This reflects an innovative trend towards using narratives in social and management sciences, which needs to be replicated by other disciplines, organisations,...

The political climate of the Kano State partisan political administration from 2003-2011 reveal a state of constant clash between the Kano State government regulatory agencies and the indigenous entertainment industries. This resulted in banning, for instance, the Hausa video film industry for some time, and the jailing of many entertainers on the...

ANNEHAOUR and BENEDETTAROSSI (eds), Being and Becoming Hausa: interdisciplinary perspectives. Leidenand Boston: Brill (pbk €75.00, $107.00 – 978 9 00418 542 5). 2010, xvii+310 pp. - Volume 83 Issue 2 - ABDALLA UBA ADAMU

The 25th anniversary of the publication of Karin Barber's fertile and provocative overview of the "Popular Arts in Africa" provides an occasion to turn back to the concepts and challenges she set out there and consider how useful they remain after twenty-five years. In discussing the way in which a longestablished cline of the "traditional/popular/...

This chapter explores the implementation of Shari'a Islamic law in Kano, northern Nigeria and how it interfaces with Hausa cinema.

This book contains selected papers from the Kano Millennium Conference held in Kano, northern Nigeria, from 10th to 14th May, 1999. The Conference was held to commemorate 1000 years of the existence of the city-state as a Kingdom-Emirate. About 60 papers were presented at the conference which could have amounted to another Kano Chronicle.1 However,...

The diffusion of entertainment forms made available through small media technologies has created transnational pathways for the adoption, appropriation, adaptation and domestication of entertainment forms in African mediascapes. In Muslim northern Nigeria, the most common transnational entertainment template is Hindi film and music from the Indian...

The rapidly changing pattern of transnational communication and the subsequent emergence of the new media and information revolution are often assumed to have a powerful impact on identities and cultures worldwide; but there is little agreement about how information flows actually interact with social processes, or even about methods for studying t...

This paper traces the transformation of Hausa popular fiction, a genre created predominantly by young Muslim Hausa of Northern Nigeria. It specifically explores the interface between creative fiction and conservative society and shows how creativity and media technologies combine to reflect a transformational stage of an aspect of popular culture i...

This monograph explores the development and outcomes of special science secondary schools as a strategy for human resource development in Nigeria. The science schools were aimed primarily at enabling specially selected senior secondary school students (Grades 10-12) to be taught science subjects in a n ew and different environment from that of conv...

The early 1960s and early 1970s witnessed massive science education reform activities aimed at a more utilitarian interpretation of science education for pupils in both developed and developing countries. Two basic strategies can be identified. The first, which was predominant, focused attention on the nature of the science curriculum. The second f...

This paper examines the interface between rhetoric and reality in the science curriculum reform in Nigeria. The focus of the analysis is the Science Schools Project established by the Kano State Government in 1977 as a scientific and technological manpower development strategy.The analysis of the teaching processes in both the specialist Science an...

John Paden's classic study of the development of religious groups in Kano and how they shaped the politics, identity and culture of Kano, northern Nigeria. Now available from UC Press as True-PDF.

This paper provides a historical overview of the development of Ajami as a literary script in Muslim northern Nigeria. It situates the development of the script within the historical context of indigenous knowledge systems of the Muslim peoples of northern Nigeria, and drawing parallels from other Muslim communities in West Africa and Asia. By focu...

This paper is a study of how transnational musical genres and forms, specifically from Hindi film music, became appropriated and domesticated by Muslim Hausa of northern Nigeria and integrated as part of their youth popular culture, as well as religious musical performances. It specifically analyses how the Muslim Hausa music of northern Nigeria be...

The paper is a Chronicle of the arrival of second batch of Wangarawa merchant clerics to Kano in 17th century. It includes both the original manuscript, as well as a translation. A Hausa Ajami Warsh version rendered in modern font is also available.

A study of the influence of north African traders on religious and cultural practices of Kano Hausa in northern Nigeria. Kano Studies, 1(4):43-49, 1968.