AN SAKO IYAN-TAMA

Malamai,

Idan kun tuna, a ranar Litinin da ta wuce kotu ta sa aka kama furodusan nan Hamisu Iyan-Tama, a kan lafin wai ya k'i zuwa kotu a kan shari'ar da su ke tafkawa da Hukumar Tace Finafinai da Dab'i ta Jihar Kano. An sako shi a yau Laraba bayan lauyan sa ya rubuta takardar neman a ba da beli a karo na biyu. Wasu kuma sun ce manya ne su ka sa baki!

Shi dai Iyan-Tama, abin da mu ka ji na kusa da shi na fad'a shi ne, ko kadan bai k'i zuwa kotu ba. Hasali ma dai ya je kotun da ke Railway har karfe 12 ba su ga alkali ko lauyan gwamnati ba; sai ya wuce kotun Normansland, a can ne ya samu labarin cewa alkalin ya na kotun hanyar Airport. Sai ya tafi can. To amma kafin ya je, ashe har an kira k'arar sa, ba ya nan, sai kawai aka ba da odar a kamo shi a kan laifin wai ya karya belin da aka ba shi tun da farko.

Yanzu dai ya na nan a gidan sa. Za a koma shari'ar a ranar 20 ga Agusta.

Allah Ya kai mu, amin.

KOTU TA SOKE BELIN IYAN-TAMA

A yau ne kotun majistare da ke hanyar zuwa filin jirgin sama na Malam Aminu Kano, karkashin mai shari'a Muktari Ahmed, ta bayar da dokar a kama shahararren mai kamfanin shirya finafinai, wato Alhaji Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, bisa laifin rashin zuwa kotu a yau, laifin da kotun ta kira tsallake beli.

Alkalin ya ba da oda an kamo Iyan-Tama, aka mayar da shi gidan kaso, har zuwa ranar da kotun za ta kara sauraron karar, wato ran 20 ga Agusta, 2008, kamar yadda lauya mai gabatar da kara, Barista Sanusi Ma'aji, ya bukata a gaban kotun.

Har ila yau, kotun ta ba da dokar cewa a rubuta wa mutanen da su ka sa hannu wajen belin Iyan-Tama a karon farko, takardar sammaci, domin su zo kotun su bayyana dalilin day a hana shi zuwa kotu, kuma ba tare da wani bayani ba. Wadannan mutane su ne Auwalu Yusuf na unguwar Gadanga da kuma Muhammed da ke zaune a unguwar Sarari a birnin Kano.

An gurfanar da Iyan-Tama a gaban kotun ne cikin Mayu bisa tuhumar da Hukumar Tace Finafinai ta ke yi masa na sakin wani fim mai suna 'Tsintsiya' wanda kamfanin sa na Iyan-Tama Multimedia ya shirya, wanda kuma ake tuhumar cewa ya sake shi ne ba tare da hukumar ta tace shi ba.

Haka kuma kotun ta tuhumi Iyan-Tama da laifin mallaka tare da tafiyar da kamfanin shirya finafinai wanda ba shi da rajista da hukumar.

A halin yanzu, Alhaji Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama na tsare a gidan kaso har zuwa lokacin da kotun za ta kara zama a ranar 20 ga Agusta 2008.

Hiyana: An Yi Suna, An Samu 'Daddy'!

A yau Lahadi aka yi sunan d'an da Maryam Hiyana ta haifa. Majiya mai tushe ta sanar da ni cewa Usman aka rad'a wa yaron, wato sunan mahaifin maijegon. Kun ga kenan labarin da na bayar a makon jiya (cewa an ce Usman za a rad'a masa) ya zama gaskiya.

To, Allah Ya raya, Ya kuma ba uwa lafiyar mama. Shi kuma angon k'arni, Ado Ahmad D'angulla, Allah Ya ba shi ikon rike iyalin sa a mutunce, amin.

Hausa Actress, Maryam Hiyana, Puts To Bed

Maryam Usman (Hiyana), the Hausa actress at the centre of the controversy that engulfed the Hausa movie industry last year, has given birth to a baby boy on Sunday, a source told LEADERSHIP last night.

The delivery was said to have taken place in a private hospital in Kano, home of the popular Hausa movie industry.

Maryam, the star of the movie 'Hiyana,' after which she was nicknamed, was engulfed in controversy in early August 2007 after she and her boyfriend had appeared in a sex clip recorded with a cellphone.

Hiyana went into hiding as a result of the indecent exposure. She eventually got married to her heart-throb, Alhaji Ado Ahmed Dangulla, a Kano-based businessman, as his second wife last November.

But the controversy led to drastic measures taken by the Kano State government in order to "sanitise" the movie industry. These included a six-month ban on all movie activities and subsequent jailing of actors, producers and distributors.

Ado and Hiyana's marriage life has been quiet and, some say, full of love.

According to our source, both Hiyana and her baby are in good condition, adding that the naming ceremony will be performed on Sunday.

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Story in LEADERSHIP of Tuesday, Aug. 5

Maryam Usman Hiyana ta haihu

Mata ku zo ku yi gud'a: "Ayyiririii!!"

Shahararriyar jarumar nan ta finafinan Hausa, Maryam Usman (Hiyana), ta haihu. Wata majiya ta sanar da ni cewa a ranar Lahadi da ta wuce ne Maryam din ta haihu. An samu d'a namiji.

A cewar majiyar, Maryam ta haihu ne a birnin Kano, a wani asibiti mai zaman kan sa.

Idan kun tuna, Maryam ta shiga tsaka-mai-wuya sakamakon bullar majigin batsa da su ka dauka ita da wani saurayin ta mai suna Bobo. Majigin, wanda aka dauka da wayar hannu, ya bulla ne a farkon watan Agusta 2007. Nan da nan ya fantsama a cikin al'umma kamar wutar bazara.

Bullar majigin ya sa jarumar ta shiga buya, ta bar industiri ana ta cece-ku-ce; kai, ba ma industiri ba, har da dukkan kasar Hausa da sauran sassa na duniya.

Bayan watanni uku ana cacar baki, a cikin Nuwamba 2007 sai wani namijin duniya, wanda ya dade ya na soyayya da Maryam, ya aure ta. Wannan ba wani ba ne illa Alhaji Ado Ahmed Dangulla, wani dan kasuwa a Kano. Auren da su ka yi ya burge mutane da dama, musamman masoyan Hiyana. An yi masu fatan alheri.

To amma hayaniyar Hiyana-Bobo din nan ta yi wa sana'ar fim babbar illa. Gwamnatin Jihar Kano ta jefo da wani mutum mai suna Malam Rabo cikin lamarin, a matsayin shugaban Hukumar Tace Finafinai ta Jihar Kano. Ba tare da bata lokaci ba, malamin ya k'ara ingiza harkar fim cikin mawuyacin hali: ya dakatar da sana'ar fim har wata shida, daga bisani kuma ya kulle manyan 'yan wasa, da furodusoshi da 'yan kasuwar finafinai, ban da kamfen din batanci kan 'yan fim da ya shiga yi a kafafen watsa labarai. A yanzu haka akwai shari'u da ake tafkawa da shi a kotu.

Ko ma dai yaya ta je ta dawo, ita Hiyana ta yi zaman ta lafiya lau da mijin ta. Na ji an ce rayuwar auren su abar burgewa ce. To amma tuni ta yi bankwana da shirin fim. Hasali ma dai, ba ta yarda ta yi mu'amala da 'yan fim, sai 'yan kalilan (irin su Maryam Oloni).

A cewar majiya ta, Hiyana da d'an da ta haifa su na nan cikin k'oshin lafiya. Ranar Lahadi za a yi suna. (Wasu sun ce sunan mahaifin ta, wato Usman, za a rad'a wa yaron).

To ko ma dai me aka rada masa, mu tamu ita ce addu'ar Alah Ya raya shi cikin k'oshin lafiya. Kuma Allah Ya ba uwa lafiyar mama, amin.

Wrong Censorship

Editorial on p.1 of the Wednesday, July 30 issue of LEADERSHIP newspaper, Abuja

Wrong Censorship

After bullying the flourishing Hausa movie industry into near-extinction, jailing actors, producers and marketers, the Kano State Censorship Board has announced a plan to punish authors that refuse to register with it, beginning from August 1. The move, under the state government's controversial morality programme, is full of contradictions. It is clearly aimed at emasculating creativity and freedom of expression.

The battle against moviemaking has created massive unemployment in a state that has since lost its lead in local industry, and the new theatre of war opened against writers would create more joblessness, discontent and cripple scholarship, all of which are dangerous to public peace. This is a painful irony for a government full of authors and scholars.

Governor Ibrahim Shekarau should stop the slide towards madness. His minders such as those censors would achieve nothing but further odium at a time other societies are keen to honour their home-grown thinkers.

Censorship in Kano

Some Preliminary Thoughts





I have restrained myself from commenting on the new regime of censorship in Kano (the latest I mean, which affects writers) because I had wanted to study the trend of opinion among the writers themselves. Being an author, my first reaction was one of anger, anger against those that work to emasculate intellectualism in Hausa land.

Kano is too important to ignore when it comes to intellectualism and creativity. It is the hub of intellectualism in Hausa land - an enviable position it seized from my native Katsina State. It is as the saying goes - when Kano sneezes, other Hausa cities catch cold immediately. Little surprise, then, that when movie making was banned for six months last year, the ripples were felt all over Northern Nigeria.

I have found myself caught between the extremes of the two stages of censorship unfurled by the Kano State Censorship Board. As a filmmaker myself, and publisher of the leading Hausa movie magazine, I was directly affected by the ban on moviemaking and the subsequent measures that were announced with the clear (though hidden) motive of emasculating the young, albeit vibrant film industry. Many of my close friends were affected; they were thrown out of work. I knew that most of them depended on the movie market to fend for themselves and even feed their kith and kin. They thus added to the army of the unemployed in Kano State. The government of Governor Ibrahim Shekarau (pictured above) has done little to reduce poverty through job-creation for the youths. I was told it employed many driving the A Daidaita Sahu motor-scooters and others in serving the quasi-police agency Hisba. But by banning filmmaking, it created a big market of unemployed youths, this time with young girls as half of the number of victims.

The level of discontent among the populace is unquantifiable.

Now that the censors are preparing to punish unregistered authors, I am caught in the centre again. Being a Hausa author myself (NB: I won the biggest Hausa writers' award with my novel "'Yartsana'), I felt doubly certain that part of the new legislation was directed at me! Of course, I am not the sole target. Everyone else is a target. In fact, I could even be considered a distant target, having not depend on book writing for a living. But the truth is that any writer worth his salt on the globe is a victim of the attack on creativity by a regime anywhere on earth.

The censors have no moral standing to prescribe a moral yardstick for authors because if they were to be judged using the same yardstick, many of them would be sent to jail first. The kind of stories one gets to hear about government officials in Kano, many of them verifiable, you would be at your wit's end trying to decipher the purpose of the current onslaught. Here are people who have failed to provide basic amenities for the common people, but they are using religion to attack others.

Can't those victimised use religion to fight back? This question is important in settling scores in the matter. No government official should consider himself holier than the next person just because he has money to employ hungry malams as radio propagandists. For, religious sentiments were used copiously to overcome filmmakers. The same sentiments have begun to be used by Malam Abubakar Rabo, the Director-General of the Censorship Board, against the authors. In the coming weeks and months, be sure to hear him on radio and TV using moral dogma to belittle and tar the authors.

The Hausa writers should not fear to fight this war. They should assemble their own Qur'anic surahs and the Prophetic hadiths against the unjust rulers and pretenders in order to defend themselves. They should visit radio and TV stations to speak out. They may be gagged there because government happens to be the biggest advertiser, but then they should use the independent media all over the world to expose the hypocrisy embedded in the ongoing war against intellectualism. Their war should be waged against the avalanche of intolerance and insensitivity which seems to be increasingly cultivated by some minority elements within the Kano State government.

They may not be rich enough in material resources to fight, but their ideas and their tenacity of purpose will be of great benefit to them. They are going to be supported by all persons of conscience. They should watch out against fifth columnists among themselves who shall be easily bought with cheap porridge by the censors.

Above all, they should be consoled by the knowledge that power is transient. Shekarau and all those book burners will not be in power forever. By 2011 there shall be a general election and Shekarau will not only go away but also fade away like an old tale. Even if he manages to plant a lackey/stooge as the next state governor, he would not have the guarantee that his interests would be safeguarded perpetually. It happened in Zamfara and many other states of the federation. And even if his stooge remains loyal to him, that stooge would one day leave. Remember that Dr Rabi'u Musa Kwankwaso, whom he defeated in 2003, was the most powerful governor Kano ever had, but where is he now? Is he not in the Siberia of political power even though he had been rewarded with a ministerial post by Obasanjo?

How I wish I could join this war. But I will not. I have only expressed my mind - for the records. My weapons shall remain in their armoury because I have friends in the Kano government. My heart will, however, remain with my friends the authors and the filmmakers. If the war degenerates, I shall fight. But on a different pitch from where both the dog the monkey shall be bloodied.

I have spoken. Ma'assalam.