(NB: This piece was published in the Weekly Trust of Friday, August 17, 2001. Bature T. Gagare is the author of the Hausa novel, Karshen Alewa Kasa)
Last week, the Sharia Commission in Katsina announced a fatwa or ruling that says music and singing by performing artistes (maroka) is no longer illegal in the state, as against an earlier ruling which banned all forms of such activity. It cited various Islamic sources which validate that brand of art at ceremonies such as weddings and coronations, in so far as doing so would not facilitate the mixing of men and women at the venues. The ruling may well stir another controversy among conservative and liberal Muslims alike.
What is not generally known was that the fatwa was the result of three months of a struggle led by Bature Tanimu Gagare, a hitherto press-shy writer who is resident in Katsina City. Using his hurriedly formed Performing Artistes and Artisans Association (or ‘Kungiyar Adalci’ as it’s popularly known), the self-styled “retired” Marxist led the charge against what he called “mullah dictatorship” – the ferocious insistence by the powerful Izala sect on the full application of Sharia laws in Katsina State, which would include the ban on folk music and other razzmatazz. The fierce confrontation led to violence in the city, culminating in an ongoing crowd-pulling court case between Gagare and Sheikh Yakubu Musa Kafanchan, the Izala leader, and others.
Prior to the announcement of the Sharia Commission’s ruling, I met Bature T. Gagare (BT to his friends) at his house in Katsina. We had met for the first time early last year when I took months-long residence in Katsina to write the biography of late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the former number two man in the military regime of Gen. Obasanjo. BT did command an air of controversy even then, largely due to his seeming iconoclastic and isolationist nature. He was a sort of mystery man, with lurid tales being told about him.
When I met the fascinating 42-year-old on Sunday, August 5, 2001, he received me warmly. In retrospect, I believe he could have also been savouring the triumph of his association over the Izala, which was going to be announced in a few days. He told me that he was travelling out of the country the next day. To cool off his heel, perhaps, or be away from a situation that could deteriorate when the fatwa was announced.
I did not, however, visit BT to discuss his recent disputes over the Sharia palaver. My interest was purely in his literary record. For, BT is the author of one of the most famous Hausa literary works, Karshen Alewa Kasa, which was published by the then Federal Ministry of Culture in 1982, after it had won third place in a writing competition organised by the ministry in 1980. At that time, the 342-page book was the lengthiest novel published in the Hausa language (and still is today!). It was also the first real modern thriller in Hausa. It tells the story of Mailoma, a Hausa pagan who acquired expensive tastes and a ruthless criminal bent in Kano and Lagos cities and then returns to his rustic, backward village somewhere near Kano where he leads a criminal gang into a volatile, deadly megalomaniac project. Many people have expressed regret that the novel wasn’t given the first prize and suspected foul play.
Karshen Alewa Kasa (Evil Shall Not Triumph) has never been reprinted and has painfully disappeared. Even BT himself does not have a copy! Recently I bought one (in fairly good condition) at a roadside stall in Kano, devoured it, and marvelled at its richness of diction, cultural ethos and style.
I went to Katsina to talk to BT on the novel because of its uniqueness, his own sense of mystery, and why he didn’t publish another book these past 19 years. Was he suffering from writer’s block – that strange affliction of literary giants which stops them from writing – after producing a masterpiece at the age of 21? He had never been interviewed by any journalist on these issues because he had turned down many requests to be so. He saw me as an admired friend and, after my gentle persuasion, relented. The interview was conducted in English, and one was surprised at BT’s command of the language because of his background and level of education. It was a no-holds-barred conversation, and one was all the more grateful that it held. Enjoy it!
SHEME: Let’s start from the beginning. Who’s B.T. Gagare?
GAGARE: My name is Bature Tanimu Gagare. I was born on June 7, 1959, at Katsina. I attended Gobarau Primary School, Katsina between 1965 and 1972. I went to Barewa College, Zaria, 1972-1977. I passed the W.A.S.C.E. with average results, but somehow I refused to further my education. I opted for the teaching profession. I worked as a teacher at the then Zaria Local Education Authority from 1978-79. I posted at Yakawada Village in (the then) Giwa Local Government Area.
From June 1979 to December year-end, I had a brief stint as a student nurse at the Nursing School, Katsina. I was dismissed for taking part in a students’ demonstration. I moved to Kano and got a job as textile designer at Bagauda Textile Mills Ltd. in 1980. I joined the local branch of the textile workers union. I was sacked after three months of active unionism in the company. I secured another job at the Universal Textiles, Bompai, Kano. I was sacked within four months for similar reason. I returned to the teaching profession by securing employment with the Kano State Ministry of Education. I served as teacher WASC at salary scale 04 at Ringim Local Government from 1980-81. At a primary school in the village of Kyarama I stayed for one year. I lived with the peasant farmers and fell in love with the rural setting. I refused to visit the city even once. Owing partly I think to my isolation and the attempt I was making to regroup my disposition in order to achieve something in life, I embarked on private studies, I became a voracious reader, although without any desire to earn a certificate for it. At the solitary village of Kyarama I conceived of and started the novel Karshen Alewa Kasa. I finished it in one month.
From 1981-83, I sought for and got admission to study Fine Art and English (NCE) at the College of Education, Kafanchan. Somewhere I think between that period, I chanced upon an ad in the New Nigerian about a Hausa Writing Competition organised by the Federal Ministry of Culture. I dusted the untyped manuscript of Karshen Alewa Kasa from my archives and promptly dispatched it to Lagos. I won an unimpressive third place in the competition. During my second year at Kafanchan I joined the student’s union and was elected the Secretary-General. I was also to be elected the Vice-President (External Affairs) of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). Two weeks to the sitting of my finals I led a student’s demonstration over bursary allowances and got dismissed along with four other comrades.
At Kafanchan I had become a leftist. With somewhat a youthful exuberance I plunged myself into the study of revolutions. I devoured the literature of the extreme left. I was specifically an advocate of violent change, the overthrow of the capitalist system, and so on. I was an admirer of Ernesto Che Guevara, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Mingh. I was committed to the ideas of Sergei Ginachevich Nechayev who preached for a (quote) “total, terrible, universal and merciless destruction” of the system.
After my expulsion from Kafanchan, I moved to Kano where I started to engage in petty trading. I was now in full-scale buying and selling of marketable commodities. I renounced socialism long before the collapse of the Soviet Union because I did not share the then Soviet’s pre-occupation with the Arms Race, which from all indications was being undertaken at an enormous social and economic cost to the proletariat of the Soviet Union. I was also disillusioned by the communists’ achievements on human rights issues, especially as it affected self-expression of the Artist. In Kano I gave up any attempt at pursuing formal education and turned inwards. My hobbies were indoor activities: creative arts, Hausa culture, Mozart and Tchivosky, poetry, philosophy and films. I am married with five children.
SHEME: How did you start writing?
GAGARE: I have answered your question on when and where I started my writings. As for how, the question is really a complex one, largely because I am an untrained writer in the sense of not being a graduate of any formal institution. I cannot claim any technical consciousness of the tools of a trained writer. How I became a writer is simply the product of a gifted individual, with perhaps a little spicing of what I have garnered from rudimentary studies through books of accomplished authors both living and dead. You may wish to put it like this: I am basically intuitive when it comes to putting the first word on a paper. I have no rules, no plans, no inhibitions of any sort. Words just flow with rapidity so intense that I find it hard sometimes to keep up with my pen. Ideas mutate, the novel forms, characters emerge from naught. Sometimes I could not even predict what would happen next. In fact that was what happened when I was writing Karshen Alewa Kasa. The book just emerged from my scribbles.
SHEME: What inspired you to write your first book? And why did you choose Hausa language?
GAGARE: I believe spontaneity is the artist’s first inspiration. The sum total of the artist’s personality reacts physically and spiritually to the environment, which is the primal inspiration to any work of fiction. In the case of my first novel, I simply sat down and began the work after I had made some false starts in life. I then discovered myself as a novelist of some sort, after I retired to a quiet and simple life in the village. I think I chose the Hausa language for two reasons. First one, I had at that time an inferiority complex about the English language itself. Why, with all those professors of English and literary critics, how could I, a novice, be recognised? But most importantly, I used Hausa because I was eager to make a mark in Hausa literature, as among the first to embark on a thriller. Karshen Alewa Kasa, with about 300 pages, is the longest single narrative among Hausa novels. I had sincerely hoped that after this book, many writers would discover the immense potentialities of the language and emulate me. Sadly, nobody did!
SHEME: The theme of Karshen Alewa Kasa is somehow curious. In it you dwelt on the lifestyle of the Maguzawa. How did you get to know that section of Hausa society so well?
GAGARE: I picked on the Maguzawa clan as the subject matter of the novel because even as early as the eighties, I was highlighting the society about the dangers of marginalization. The Maguzawa as you know is a derogative term, coined by the Hausa-Fulanis to identify the unconquered group of Hausa speaking peoples among them. The Maguzawa had been the victims of Muslim Hausa-Fulani domination and segregation for over one hundred years because, although Hausas themselves, they had held tenaciously to animistic practices. All attempts to Islamise them by the Jihadists or Christianise them by the missionaries had not eliminated this proud race. For this reason the Maguzawa are barely tolerated among the Hausa-Fulanis. They are marginalized and isolated, derided and shunned. They are second-class citizens, denied education, employment and social recognition. The Maguzawa are a raw material that can be moulded by any evil genius for the purpose of revolt, insurrection or organised crime. The principal character in Karshen Alewa Kasa, Mailoma, opted for crime.
Well, I happen to know the lifestyle of the Maguzawa because I lived close to them during my teaching job at Yakawada. I had visited several hamlets of the clans that were scattered in the farmhouses of Giwa area. I had several times attended their weddings and political meetings. Yet I must admit I know scarcely little about these fascinating people, I guess mainly because, as a Hausa Muslim myself, the scope for mutual trust is quite minimal.
SHEME: You portrayed Mailoma as a violent character and filled the novel with violence, bad language, drunkenness and bawdy passages. Why?
GAGARE: It is said that the society moulds behaviour. In a nutshell, Mailoma is a the by-product of a society which oppressed his minority group. As one destined by fate to lead his people to emancipation, he disdainfully failed because he himself adopted crime as an instrument of liberation. In order to sound a warning to the leaders of any liberation struggle, the message in Karshen Alewa Kasa is that crime never pays. That is why Mailoma and his gangsters could not succeed.
SHEME: I heard that you faced some government trouble over Karshen Alewa Kasa. What happened?
GAGARE: Karshen Alewa Kasa received popular acclaim at the instance of its publication. Within three months the book had been recommended for Hausa students at NCE (National Certificate of Education) and university levels. That was during the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. After the December 1983 coup of Generals Buhari and Idiagbon, a shift in government policy took place and it affected the novel’s future. The government pruned down on what it believed was ‘excess’ expenditures, and among the ministering most affected was the Youth and Culture Ministry. The government, through its WAI (War against Indiscipline) programme denied further publications of the novel. By the end of Buhari’s brief dictatorship, the novel had disappeared from the bookshops. Now I’d say it is a collectors’ item!
SHEME: Since that novel you have not been heard again. Are you suffering from writer’s block?
GAGARE: Not really. You see, I have never been in a haste to produce a work simply because I want to see my name on it. Currently I have finished as Hausa novel, of about 450 pages, titled Tsuliyar Kowa Da Kashi. Now the problem I was having with Gaskiya Corporation, whom I had given the work to publish and distribute, was on finance. The company is currently having financial difficulties and could not undertake a project of such magnitude like the publication of a voluminous work the size of Tsuliyar Kowa Da Kashi. I myself don’t have the money to give them as advance so that they could get on with the job. So the problem has remained unresolved for over two years. While waiting for the release of the aforesaid novel, I have also embarked on an English version of it.
SHEME: What are your plans on creative writing?
GAGARE: After Tsuliyar Kowa… I may have to turn my attention to English prose because I have now gained enough experience to tackle the language with the finesse of a qualitative writer. I was also so much encouraged by the language precision and conciseness of talented writers of Hausa stock, who achieved excellence comparable to our more experienced colleagues in the south. Such books as Ibrahim Sheme’s The Malam’s Potion and the works of Abubakar Gimba give me added impetus to try my hands at English prose.
SHEME: In recent year there has been a debate on Hausa romance fiction, the so-called Soyayya books. Some say those books are injurious to Hausa culture and literature, while others say no. Where do you stand in the debate?
GAGARE: What is the essence of literature to man? Apart from the aesthetic qualities of any work of art, there may also be the functional role it serves. The most important function of any creative writing is to entertain and educate the audience. In so far as the Soyayya genre performs these successful functions to the fulfilment of the spiritual and physical needs of man, I believe then the purpose of that work of art has been realised. The question is: to what extent can we measure the success or failure of the Soyayya novelists? We can only make assessments based on the reactions of their target audience. How far have they succeeded in reaching these audience through treatment of universal themes such as ‘love’, for instance?
On the aesthetic angle, the Soyayya novels have generated a lot of controversy because critics of their works tend to equate it to a certain mode of standardisation which must conform to their expectations of what a real work of art should be. This is wrong.
SHEME: Some critics say since the end of the days of the Hausa classics, Hausa literature is dead. What do you think?
GAGARE: Dead? This is the first time I am hearing this nonsense. In fact, to put it more correctly, I would say that Hausa writing is just on the verge of being created. What we have had in the past were simply translations from the Arabian Nights and other sources of Arabic literature. Now serious writers are coming up who have no time for idolisation of such fairy stories and myths like Magana Jari Ce, Ruwan Bagaja, Dare Dubu Da Daya, etc. How can you describe these crops of writers as unserious?
SHEME: How can we re-create Hausa writing?
GAGARE: They say that the road to perfection is practice and more practice. The writers must be encouraged to write even if in the beginning it (their output) would be expected to be trash. Soon by a process of natural selection shall emerge qualitative works. Publishers and other private foundations should organise Hausa writing competitions on an annual basis so that in a year at least three novels of proven quality could be published.
SHEME: The Hausa book publishing industry is in limbo. Can it be resuscitated?
GAGARE: It’s an hazardous enterprise I believe, but still, vital to the success of the educational and cultural progress of the North. The government should assist publishing companies through tax waivers, patronage, subsidies and loans.
SHEME: Given your record, do you see yourself as a controversial person and writer? People call you names.
GAGARE: The essence of writing for communication to an audience is to provoke a response, whether negative or positive. That my writings could spark off a stirring of views, sometimes with so much passion among the audience, is merely a testimony to the fact that I am doing my job very well. Am I a controversial person? Well, let’s put it this way. Is the writer or the artist’s work an extension of his personality? In that respect I am a little bit on the controversial side, because whenever I strike with my pen, I send shivers through some circles. As a person too, people love to call me all sorts of names: atheist was one of them; gangster, confusionist, and so on. These, of course, are all false. Of one thing people who know me closely are unanimous about – that I am intelligent! Wrong again. I am simply an average human being, no more intelligent than my next-door neighbour is, but maybe only just slightly more stubborn in the pursuit of my objectives.
SHEME: Your recent activism in Katsina seems to portray you as controversial. Don’t you think so?
GAGARE: What you call my activism in Katsina evidently had to mean the role I played during the last three months of disturbances on the Sharia issue in the state. As the General-Secretary of the Performing Artistes and Artisans Association, Katsina State, I had a job to do, principally to smash the Mullah dictatorship endangering our profession and, by implication, our culture. The wind that swept the false Ulama and humiliated the Izala sect in Katsina was simply a reaction by the youths, the musicians, artists and other Muslims, towards a very dangerous blend of dictatorship and Sharia in the state. Now of course, our Association had stood firm and routed the false mullahs. If for that some people believe I am a controversial kind, then I guess I must bear the consequence.
