GENESIS TO REVELATION: LITERATURE BUREAUS, LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS AND THE HAUSA NOVEL

 GENESIS TO REVELATION: LITERATURE BUREAUS,

LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS AND THE

HAUSA NOVEL

Introduction

n any society, popular literature is produced either to be read by a literate audience or

to be enacted on television or in the cinema; it is produced by writers who are

members, however lowly, of an elite corps of professional literates. This is more so

because literature, like all other human activities, necessarily reflects current social and

economic conditions, and human activities are widely accessible to all members of the

society. However, class stratification was reflected in literature as soon as it had appeared

in life. In the Hausa society, for instance, the chants of the bori cultists, differ from the

secret, personal songs of the individual, and these likewise differ from the group songs of

entertainment sung in community.

Of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Muslim Hausa have the most extensive

and well-established literary tradition. This was made possible by contact with Islam as

far back at the 1320s in Hausa land, which exposed the area to the literary polemics and

activities of the Muslim world at large. Thus, while most Nigerian communities glorified

their literary antecedents through extensive collections of oral traditions and folk tales,

the Muslim Hausa, in addition to similar extensive collection of oral traditions, had the

instruments to write down their literature through the medium of the Arabic language

earlier than all the groups. And while classical Arabic remained the preserve of the clerics

and courtiers in Muslim Hausa communities for centuries, subsequently, even the Hausa

language became Arabicised in the form of a locally adapted script, ajami, that opened up

literary expressions for millions of literate, but not scholastic, members of the

community.

The scholastic and literary tradition of the Hausa was further enhanced by the 1804

Islamic reform initiated by Sheikh Usman bn Fodiyo which established a cultural

framework that provided inspiration for subsequent literary traditions in Hausa land and

which has sustained itself. Therefore, the scholastic tradition in Hausa land was

essentially religious having been generated and sustained by clerics.

The British arrival in Hausa land in 1903 (and what later became Northern Nigeria)

introduced new elements of literary tradition among the Hausa. The establishment of the

Translation Bureau in 1929, which became the Literature Bureau in 1935 (Hayatu 1991)

by the colonial government ensured, through a literary competition in 1933 that a whole

new set of reading materials, and consequently literary style, was created. The literary

competition of 1933 yielded the first clutch of now Hausa boko literature written in

classical Hausa, (Ruwan Bagaja, Shehu Umar, Ganɗoki, Idon Matambayi, and Jiki

Magayi) published in 1935. Since the scholastic tradition of the Hausa has always been

the preserve of the malam (teacher, scholar) class; consequently, even in popular

literature the fountainheads, being carved out of that class, reflect their antecedent

scholastic traditions. Consequently, these novels were written mainly by scholars, some,

like Abubakar Imam who wrote Ruwan Bagaja, were young (he was 22 when he wrote

the novel), with deep Islamic roots (who actually took some convincing to even agree to

write in the boko — Romanized — scripts in the first place, considering such activity as

dilution of their Islamic scholarship). As Dr. Rupert East, the arch-Evengali of the Hausa

classical literature, exasperatedly noted,

                 …the first difficulty was to persuade these Mallams that the thing was

worth doing. The influence of Islam produces an extremely

serious-minded type of person. The art of writing moreover, being

intimately connected in his mind with his religion, is not to be treated

lightly. Since the religious revival at the beginning of the (19th) century,

nearly all the original work produced by Northern Nigerian authors have

been either purely religious or written with a strong religious motive.

Most of it was written in Arabic, which, like Latin in Medieval Europe,

was considered a moreworthy medium of any work of importance than

the mother tongue. (East 1936: 350).

In 1945, the Literature Bureau transformed into Gaskiya Corporation and in 1953, the

colonial government established North Regional Literature Agency (NRLA, or more

commonly, NORLA) to supplement the activities of the Literature Bureau/Gaskiya

Corporation. However, in 1959 NORLA was disbanded and replaced in 1960, the year of

independence, with a publishing outfit, Gaskiya Corporation, which relied more on

commercial outlets for sustenance, than government grants. In 1965 the Corporation

entered into an agreement with Macmillan (UK) to establish a book publishing unit in

order to revitalize the book publishing industry. Subsequently in October 1966 the

Northern Nigerian Publishing Company (NNPC) was registered, with Gaskiya eventually

owning 60% and Macmillan 40% of the shares of the company.

This chapter analyses the evolutionary trends of the contemporary Hausa novel, focusing

attention on the role of literature bureaus and writers' organisations, and readerships in

the emergence of the genre of the Contemporary Hausa Novel. It argues that availabilityof media technologies has altered the interpretation of the traditional Hausa society as

reflected in novels written, printed, distributed and read by principally, the Hausa urban

youth.

Generations of Hausa Fiction Writers

The efforts of the British colonial administration to instill written literature among the

Muslim Hausa led to the establishment of distinctly colonial literature of the mid-1930s

in northern Nigeria. Such literature that saw the emergence of Magana Jari Ce by

Abubakar Imam as the quintessential Hausa literature was rooted in a society that

approached Western education with suspicion and as subversive to religious and cultural

norms of the Muslim peoples of Northern Nigeria (among whom the British literary

efforts was focused).

Magana Jari Ce occupies a cross-road in Nigerian postcolonial studies.

While a colonial creation, yet it provides a postcolonial mechanism of

hybridity – creating literature that borrows from other literatures, weaves

and adapts it to African settings and contexts. Homi Bhabha’s (1993)

 

neologism of hybridity would seem to sit in quite well with Imam’s

transformations of tales from Europe and the Middle East and recasting

them in Hausa. The colonial deliberate process of imposing European

children’s literature and fairy tales attests to what I refer to as ‘artificial

insemination of literature’.

 Published in 1937 in three volumes, Magana Jari Ce established itself as the

quintessential Hausa literature because of its clever weaving of local mind-sets, with

transnational fictional landscapes in its more than 80 stories. For instance, 11 stories are

from the Arabian One Thousand and One Nights; 14 fables are German folklore from the

collection of Brothers Grimm; 7 short stories from Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

from Italy; 2 fables are from Danish Hans Andersen; 5 stories are from a Persian version

of the Indian collection Shuka Saptati; 2 stories are from the Indian collection

Panchatantra; 1 each are based on a Greek myth about the king of Macedonia, and a

fable by the German, Wilhelm Hauff.

Imam’s inter-textual re-reading of these various European and Arabian works – running

away from African literature – established a template for colonial acceptance of literature

among Muslim northern Nigerians. Perhaps Imam’s subversion was in how he went out

of his way to domesticate these translational literatures and create a subterranean script

underneath the translations that convey these tales as reflecting Hausa Muslim societies

of his period, without acknowledging the antecedent sources of such literature.

The British device of Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria created a cosy relationship

between the colonial administration and the traditional hierarchy, such that the latterendorsed whatever the former did. Imam was ‘released’ from teaching by the Emir of

Katsina to work on Magana Jari Ce as a result of a request by the British colonial

administration. What emerged subsequently was a literature that must be cast in the

image of Magana Jari Ce to be accepted by the traditionalist public culture in Northern

Nigeria.

Generations of Hausa writers passed through the same hybrid spectrum created by Imam.

The first generation (1933-1945) were writers of what I can call classical Hausa

literature. There is no meter for making this judgement, except for linguistic style. I

argue that the linguistic styles used in this category of books was the quintessentially

“correct” and therefore classical Hausa. The strong links between literary acquisition and

the Islamic erudition connotes an Islamic and cultural respectability to this mode of

expression.

Further, the sentence structure in the early classical Hausa books no longer reflect

contemporary common modes of speech. The language used in the books was the

“accepted gentleman’s” mode of speech, free of vulgarities and virtually academic. It has

to be, considering that the books were State-sponsored, and that also they were

essentially aimed at grade schools. The sponsorship by the State, in the form of colonial

administration, itself under British Conservative Party influence, ensured books written in

prose that the British would approve. Thus books such as Ruwan Bagaja, Magana Jari

Ce, Shehu Umar and Ganɗoki reflect these styles, and as earlier argued, represent

classical Hausa literature. Consequently, the strong links between these early Hausa

classics and educational endeavours confer on them an elite status not afforded to other

forms of Hausa fiction.

The second generation (1950-1979) of writers are what I consider writers of neo-classical

Hausa literature, who seemed to be awed by, and rooted to, the literary aesthetics of the

classical Hausa generation. There was a studied attempt at humour and correct mode of

speech, and behaviour. The censoring hand of the State machinery was also very present

in these books, especially as the task of publishing them was undertaken by the

State-sponsored agencies. Further, the creation of more high schools in the era, meant

more books needed to be used as set books for Hausa studies, and as such a large volume

of these books were produced and the major examination body recommended them as

textbooks. Consequently, books such as Gogan Naka, Kitsen Rogo, Iliya Ɗan Maiƙarfi,

Sihirtaccen Gari, and Tauraruwa Mai Wutsiya all became comparable with the classics,

but with an admixture of fantasy, realism and even a dash of inter-stellar travel

(Tauraruwa Mai Wutsiya). Their focus also altered to reflect problems of urbanization

and the greater complexities of an emergent semi-technological society.

The third generation (1980-1985) can be considered writers of modern Hausa classical

literature, where socially accepted linguistic modes were used in the narratives. However,

it seemed that Hausa fiction was emerging from the era of fantasy into a firmer reality.

The novelists in this category were still part of the State chaperonage. This was because

in 1980, the Department of Culture of the then Federal Ministry of Social Welfare and

Culture, organized a literary competition for creative writings in the three major Nigerian

languages, that is; Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. This was in line with the Federal

Government’s focus on culture (spawning off Nigeria Magazine from the same

Department). The winning Hausa novels were Tsumangiyar Kan Hanya, Zaɓi Naka,

Qarshen Alewa Qasa, and Turmin Danya. The linguistic styles as well as the themes of

these novels reflected attempts to retain a degree of relevancy in an increasingly changing

world. But the stilted presentation of “correct” behaviour could not capture the attention

(or the money) of a new age generation of readers still in their adolescence. The writers

did not continue much writing beyond these first attempts. In order to create relevance for

itself under dwindling patronage, NNPC decided to hold another literary competition in

1981, harking back at the one held in 1933 to boost sales. Although eight books were

selected as the best, only three were published. These included So Aljannar Duniya,

Amadi Na Malam Amah, and Mallakin Zuciyata (a play).

Each of the first three generations operated under more or less isolated and protected

medium. The novels were published by large multinational publishers, and they were

keen to emphasize marketability and acceptability. Matters of style, language, format and

presentation therefore were rigorously enforced if not by the authors, then by the copy

editors of the companies. Table 1 shows a bibliographical summary of the representatives

of the Hausa literary generations.