gender politics: women‟s writings and film in northern nigeria edited ahmed yerima saeedat aliyu

326 Pages·2017·2.42 MB·English

GENDER POLITICS: WOMEN‟S WRITINGS AND FILM IN NORTHERN
NIGERIA

EDITED
AHMED YERIMA
SAEEDAT ALIYU
EDITORS NOTE
Literature and film from Northern Nigeria is a robust and progressive tradition of creativity
contributing to African literature and production in the quest for egalitarian society. Enjoying
a long history spanning decades even before the advent of missionaries into sub-Saharan
Africa, literature from the northern part of Nigeria encapsulates aesthetics of style and
content reflective of that unique part of the Nigerian nation. The social, political and
economic contributions of northern women to the establishment and development of
Northern Nigeria has been monumental with historical accounts of the contributions of
heroines such as Nana Asmau, Queen Amina of Zazzau, Gambo Sawaba and legions of
others whom written history may not have recorded, cannot be quantified. Thus reflections of
the strengths and vision of northern women has found expression in literature and film from
the region. However, have these reflections, portrayals and characterization of women and
issues about women been accurate; have women writers, critics, actresses and producers
enjoyed acceptability and equality from the populace? What are the issues surrounding
northern women in Nigeria?
These are some of the issues the articles in this book attempt to answer. For instance, in a
discussion about the stereotyped beliefs about Islam prohibiting the education of women,
Hamzat AbdulRaheem makes a firm stand, using historical facts to counter the erroneous
perception. He goes further to cite examples of northern women who were educated and
contributed significantly to the development of their societies. AbdulGaniyu Issa and
Akinfenwa Stephen address the issue of Western Education and its impact on Northern
Nigeria. They posited that the slow development of western education in the north may not be
unconnected to the challenge posed by another form of civilisation which has taken firm root
in the region. Femi Abiodun attempts a justification of two women music forms from Ilorin,
Baalu and Senwele as reflective of the predominant music trend of northern women music. In
a study of a Hausa films (Kukan Zaki) Asabe Kabir Usman and Aisha Umar Muhammed
examine patriarchy-induced stereo-typical depictions of mothers-in-law and conclude that
society conditions the continued patriarchal sensibilities even as the world continues to
clamour for an end.
One trend that resonates is the examination of women characters and writings which
emphasize the resilience of the women folk in subtly rejecting roles of remaining in the
background which culture and tradition has made almost sacred. Yacim Ande, Adebola
Isaiah, Halima Sekula, Foluke Aliyu-Ibrahim among many others highlight this germane
point in their write-ups to emphasize that the northern woman is not going to remain in the
background but will prove herself to be worthy members of the society, willing and capable
of contributing significantly to the development of her society.

Amed Yerima
Saeedatu Aliyu
Foreword
I am happy to present this collection of papers of the 6th Conference on Northern Nigerian
Literature which was held at the Kwara State University from the 29th of November to the
2nd of December, 2011. The hosting of the conference was a major landmark for KWASU
because it showed the beginning of a collaborative relationship between the Kwara State
University and Bayero University, Kano and it also celebrated the interest of the two
Universities to forge ahead with the encouragement of research in intellectual work especially
as it concerns specifically, literature and the humanities in a broader sense.
This year's conference was titled "Women in Literature and Film in Northern Nigeria" and it
focused on challenges and hopes and most of all, on how to bring newness, and address the
issue of participation of women in literature and film in Northern Nigeria. This is why the
collection of essays here are most unique. Because they are written by some of the foremost
interpreters of the development and evolution of literature especially as it concerns the
"woman" in Northern Nigeria, care has been taken to note the density, originality and
cohesion of materials of this collection of essays. It is also interesting to note that none of
these essays has been published previously elsewhere.
I must once again acknowledge the founding minds of the conference, Professor Shuaib Oba
AbdulRaheem for his foresightedness in initiating the conference and the present Vice
Chancellor of Bayero University, Professor Adamu Rasheed for his zeal and pro-activeness
in agreeing to a fruitful working collaboration between our two Universities in the review of
the literatures coming from the Northern part of Nigeria.
Professor AbdulRasheed Na'Allah
Vice Chancellor
Kwara State University.
Gender Politics and Sexual Dynamics, Imaging Men in African Women‟s Writing: The
Quest for Identity and Integrity.
A paper Delivered at the 6th Annual Conference on Northern Nigerian Literature,
Ilorin- Kwara State
29th November- 2nd December, 2011.

Prof. Zaynab Alkali
I am delighted to be here and grateful for the honour and privilege of presenting one of the
lead papers. I thank the Vice Chancellor and the organisers for realising this laudable
conference. The title of this paper, slightly altered, reads, ―Gender Politics and Sexual
Dynamics, Imaging Men in African Women‟s Writing: The Quest for Identity and
Integrity”. I am fully aware that the focus of the conference is on literature in Northern
Nigeria; however, the nature of the theme of my paper commands a wider coverage to
include African Literature. The reason is simply that African women writers of earlier
generation had set the precedence for the imaging of men in their literary works, the fact of
which will soon be made clear.
The theme of the paper ―Imaging Man in Literature‖ came to me with a sudden jolt. ‗No
way!‘ was my first reaction. Asking a ‗branded‘ feminist to deliver a paper on ―Imaging
Man‖ must be, I thought, the height of mischief by my literary colleagues in Literature, but
on second thoughts, I decided, why not? Whatever the motive, I appreciate the challenge. It is
my chance to take a hard look at the image of man in African women‘s writings, and to re-
examine my own stand on gender politics, not that I am conscious of standing on any
particular ground.
Gender politics is as old as humanity. It started with our ancestors Adam and Eve, Satan and
the Serpent. Gender politics will survive as long as humankind exists, for it is the salt that
spices our union, and the subtle cord that binds a man and a woman together. To discuss
gender politics and the imaging of man in African Literature is to go the whole hog in
discussing the genders as they relate to each other, for a man‘s image is firmly anchored on
his treatment of the woman in his life. ―Treat me like a Queen and you‘ll be treated like a
King‖, is an appropriate saying.
Where best then can imaging man be sought for, but in women‘s literature? Most women‘s
writings have been classified as feminist literature. Whether the women subscribe to it or not
is not the issue here. The issue is why the image of man becomes a dominant feature and
comes across strong in African women‘s direct response to the imaging of woman by male
writers in African Literature? Could it be that the male dominance in African Feminist
literature is a direct response to the imaging of women by male writers in African Literature?
Feminism is history in the making, and feminist literature, like other literatures before it, is a
protest literature. Art is generally said to be ―an emotive expression‖ triggered by the need,
sometimes an urgent and anxious need to correct certain injustices perceived in society. Such
literatures attack, in order to defend dignity and integrity. We are all aware of vibrant poems
that came out of Apartheid South Africa, or Negritude poems from French colonies. Back
home in British West Africa, the emergence of a body of literature, by our prolific fathers is
believed to be a protest literature against the misrepresentation of Africa and Africans by
British colonizers, sailors, slave merchants, explorers, missionaries and political adventurers.
The colonizers especially those who wrote on Nigeria, presented a one- sided negative
account of Africans ―which emphasized the barbarity and inhumanity of Africans, their lack
of inventiveness and their addiction to human sacrifice and lawlessness‖ (Taiwo, p.6). How
much more provocation did Africa‘s literary giants need to correct such distortions and
misrepresentations? With Chinua Achebe in the lead, African writers set out to ―assert our
true image‖ to ―propagate our cultures‖ and to quote a critic, ―to reconstruct in fiction a
Nigerians‘ Nigeria out of the ruins of history and as an appropriate reaction to the
misrepresentation of Africa which has gone on for so long‖ (Taiwo, p.23).
There is no doubt the writers have succeeded in this noble quest. They made Africa proud by
placing the continent on the world literary map.to quote Ngugi wa Thiongo of Kenya,
―Achebe has succeeded in giving human dignity to African characters‖, his task as a writer is
of ―helping his society to regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of years of
denigration and self-denigration‖ (Ngugi, p.7, as quoted by Alkali, 2011).
African novels the likes of Sembene Ousmane‘s God‟s Bits of Wood, Peter Abraham‘s A
Wreath for Udoma and Ngugi wa Thiongo‘s The River Between, have captured the image of
strong and powerful women of Africa. The writers pay women laudable attention to their
roles as ‗politically active, morally powerful‖ and great contributors to the successes of
revolutions (Chukukere, p.8), (Flora, p.527). The effort however, seems to be too little and
too far away from home, considering that in Nigerian male authored fictions, women are left
behind in this laudable uplifting. Unfortunately left behind where the colonial masters had
relegated them to the background, like Bamu the wife of Mister Johnson in Joyce Cary‘s
Mister Johnson, stupid, docile, subservient, timid and of lowly status. ―She knows nothing
and can say nothing because she can think nothing‖ (Uko, p.83). Such characterization in
earlier writings is reserved for married women who should have been deserving of respect
and honour.
For the unmarried ones, they come as prostitutes, seductresses, mistresses and women of easy
virtue, even when they are highly placed career-oriented women. Going by some male-
mentality, the beautiful, intelligent, scheming seductress who attracts the male is better kept
outside the matrimonial home and secretly visited because she is not only dangerous but
without respect or honour, what the French would refer to as ―femme fatale‖. Thus, a double
standard is set, one for the obedient wife and respected mother, and another for her
dishonourable sister. Such female stereotypes are found not only in African Literatures but in
literatures all over the world.
Indeed, African male creative writers are not the only culprits in their neglect of credible
women in their works; male critics are also to be blamed. Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian
prolific writer/ critic complained bitterly of the neglect African women writers suffer at the
hands of male critics. In her article ―To be an African Woman Writer…‖ (pp. 5130518),
Aidoo mentioned a German Professor, Dieter Riemenschneider, who in his lecture titled
―Regional Similarities and Differences in African Literature‖ in March, 1985, failed to
mention a single African Woman Writer. She also mentioned another famous critic, Gerald
Moore in his Seven African Writers published in 1962 and updated in 1981, to cover Twelve
African Writers, who also failed to include a single woman from Africa, even though by
1981, quite a number d credible women writers had emerged from Africa. Again, what about
Emmanuel Ngara in his book Art and Ideology in African Novel, published by Heinemann as
recently as 1985? Again Aidoo reported that Ngara did not mention a single African writer,
even in passing, maybe Nadine Gordimer. Aidoo‘s rage is expressed in these words:
What is clear is that there is truly a shocking and over lengthening
list of African commentators on African literature who manage
to convey solidly to the interested world community, an impression
that either there are no African women writers around at all, or if
there are, then their work is not deserving of serious critical attention
(Aidoo, pp.516).

A female critic, Chukukere believes that ―the unsatisfactory appreciation of the significance
of women in life has spilled into imaginative literature‖ and not only ―African male creative
literature, but African literary criticisms have largely become a male-oriented and male-
controlled cult (emphasis mine) (Chukukere, p.9).
African women writers are therefore enraged by the poor imaging, or complete neglect of the
true African woman. The rage has roots and the writers feel the urge to correct such
misrepresentation.
Flora Nwapa of Nigeria admitted that the imaging of male characters in her works was a
deliberate attempt to reverse the roles credited to women by men. She claimed to have
explored the theme of moral laxity as a direct response to earlier novels written by men on
the theme of prostitution. The Jagua‘s of Ekwensi‘s Jagua Nana, the Simi‘s of Soyinka‘s The
Interpreters and the Wanja‘s of Ngugi wa Thiongo‘s Petals of Blood are promptly replaced
by male pimps and prostitutes, Chris, Ernest, Mark and Olu, in Women are Different (Nwapa,
p.531).
Nawal El Saadawi of Egypt confesses to the initial purpose for her writing as inspired by
anger, she claims to write in order to release her anger. ―What angered me most‖ she writes,
―were oppression; oppression of women and oppression of the poor‖ (El Saadawi, as quoted
by N. Eke, p. 49). In her fiction, the Arab world is masculine, women are just appendages. El
Saadawi ―unabashedly exposes the lowest part of African womanhood‖ (ibid, p.133). The
woman in El Saadawi‘s novels does all the work, satisfies her husband‘s urges, sleeps
without food, washes her husband‘s feet and gets beaten when a son or a domestic animal
dies (Ibid, p133). Not only are Saadawi‘s male characters heartless, selfish and cruel, they are
also morally depraved. A female character describes her father in these words:
My father, a poor farmer who could neither read nor write,
knew very few things in life. How to grow crops, how
to sell a buffalo poisoned by his enemy before it died, how
to exchange his virgin daughter for a dowry… how to be
quicker than his neighbour in stealing the crops from the
fields once the crop was ripe …How to beat his wife and
make her bite the dust each night
(Woman at Point Zero, p. 12).

To crown this, most of El Saadawi‘s male characters are physically despicable. Here is a
typical description of a father by a daughter in Woman at Point Zero:
His mouth was like that of a camel, with a big opening and wide jaws.
His upper jaw kept clamping down on his lower jaw with a loud grinding
noise, and chewed through each morsel so thoroughly that we could
hear his teeth striking against each other. His tongue kept rolling round
and round in his mouth as though it also was chewing, darting out every
now and then to lick off some particle of food that had stuck to his
lips or dropped on his chin (pp18-19).

George Tarabishi, one of El Saadawi‘s ardent critics, observes that in Saadawi‘s novels, men
in general are almost always portrayed as having ―a hairy chest like that of a monkey‖ and
―prominent belly like that of a pregnant woman‖ and their bodies are almost always ―huge‖
and ―smell of tobacco‖ (Tarabishi, p.172).