hausa film: Compatible or incompatible with islam? abstraCtGlobalization, now at its peak, is tied with media like a computer to its screen. Film is a vital media technology endowed with ample efficacy through which much propaganda -for good or bad -is sold out to the people. This is so because almost everybody can understand the language of film and its appeal; it is conferred with the communicative power that often mobilizes people to react peacefully or otherwise. Such as it is, film-makers in Kano as well as other didactic, Shari'ah-abiding and substantially Muslim northern states of Nigeria are in constant ideological clash with the larger society, the government and the religious institutions. The film-makers are accused of misrepresenting and attacking the sociocultural and the religious value systems. The major ethnic group in the state and the region is Hausa, the people who are strict followers of Islam, the religion, which, in a greater proportion, conforms with their Arab-influenced culture; thus, both the culture and Islam frown at the films, especially such as those being produced, for many contain Indian masala popular cinema and quasi-Euro-American and non-Islamic ideas, practices and experiences, and do not correspond to the culture and the religion of the people. Therefore, this article, among other things, seeks to look inwards in search of what led to the current state of affairs. The writer offers advice on how to better things.

Against many odds, the Hausa film industry alias Kannywood has come of age. The film industry survives several pressing challenges from within and outside Nigeria, perhaps more than its counterparts anywhere else. Although there is no denying that the quality of its output has significantly improved, its survival has little or nothing to do with that. Many critics, including the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN) leadership, call ‘bad’ films, are still being made. Romantic movies, laden with a typical and predictable pattern of the love triangle, song and dance sequences among other appropriated and plagiarized Bollywood modalities, remain the favourite of producers and arguably that of the audience. However, according to some surveys, such films lack merit in the realm of critical film discourse in Africa and beyond. This article is set out to discuss this issue through a content analysis of a recent film titled Sareena (Nuhu 2019). The movie, released in 2019, is a bloated, implausible melodrama and a direct mimicry of a famous Indian film, Kaabil (Gupta 2017).

Since its inception in 1990, Kannywood, the Northern Nigerian film industry, produced films only in Hausa, the dominant language of the region. The film, There is a Way (2016, dir. Falalu A. Dorayi) has recently debuted a new "genre" in the English language in the industry. However, the place of English or any non-African language in African arts (film, inclusive) is a topic of scholarly debate, especially within the discourse of postcolonial studies. Many pan-African writers and critics query the justification of that as the language is, they argue, foreign to African audience and is used only by and for the elites. Kannywood filmmakers, nevertheless, claim that theirs is rather a response to the Southern Nigerian filmmakers whose industry, Nollywood is enormously successful and far ahead for, among other reasons, their use of English. This paper attempts an evaluation of the English language and the subtitle of the film in question, to access the success or otherwise of its narrative essence.

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This research focuses on fake news and how journalists understand and counter fake news. The researchers used purposive sampling and collected data through in-depth interviews. Members of Mardan and Nowshera press clubs were interviewed regarding how they counter fake news. All the respondents agreed that fake news must be discouraged and that not only the media persons but the government should also take action against media organizations that publish or onair fake news. Most of them said that social media is the main source of fake news and that there should be some kind of regulations on social media to discourage fake news. Some called for training for journalists on how to counter fake news.