The Challenge of Literary Critics, Home Video and Government

Modern Hausa literature has faced serious problems from the outset. First of all, it started

in the informal setting where authors self-publish. They have to play several roles as

authors, publishers, booksellers and promoters. Secondly, they faced challenges with

booksellers who dictate the market to the extent that authors sell copyrights to

booksellers. Thirdly, there is the challenge of home videos which almost killed the

movement in the last quarter of the 1990s, and first quarter of the new decade. Then,

there was the challenge of poor public opinion shaped by some Muslim scholars who

condemned the new literary movement as antithesis to morality.

Unfriendly Literary Critics

But the most formidable challenge modern Hausa literature and authors faced was that of

literary critics and state censorship. From the beginning, literary critics especially from

academic institutions and universities dismissed the whole movement as unworthy of

critical attention. Even when Hausa scholars like Professors Ibrahim Yaro Yahaya, MKM

Galadanci had given encouragement to authors like Ado Ahmad Gidan Dabino and Dan

Azumi in Kano, and Yusuf Adamu had been encouraged and supported by Professor

Dalhatu Muhammad and Drs. Dunfawa and Yakasai (Dunfawa reviewed Yusuf Adamu’s

Idan So Cuta Ne and made it a set book for third-year university students), the movement

has not been given due academic attention.

Only one literary critic, Malam Ibrahim Malumfashi, a literary historian based at the

Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, finds the movement worthy of academic attention.

However, even Malumfashi studied the movement with disdain, dismissing it as a mere

market literature. In 1992, he wrote a seminal newspaper article in a popular Hausa

newspaper Nasiha of 7th-14th August, 1992 titled: Tsakanin Gwanjo da Origina (Between

Genuine and Fake Literature). This article opens a ground for literary debates on the

pages of Nasiha newspaper between the protagonist and antagonist of the modern Hausa

literature. While those against condemned the new movement as producing sub-standard

literary materials, at the same time polluting Hausa culture and religion, the supporters

defended the movement as a reflection of what is happening in the society and arguing

that their works are as good as any work of Hausa literature. Table 2 gives a list of

supporters and those against modern Hausa literature as their newspaper articles

suggested.

Table 2: Supporters and those against of Modern Hausa Fiction

S/N Promoters of Modern Hausa Fiction

1 Ibrahim Sheme

2 Abdalla Uba Adamu

3 Ado Ahmad Gidan Dabino

4 Yusuf M. Adamu

Saham