The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Department of English and Literary Studies, Bayero University, Kano muhsin2008@gmail.com The Author’s Biographical Notes Born in 1946 in Erunwon village in Ogun state, Nigeria, Femi Osofisan is a prolific critic, poet, novelist, and playwright whose work mainly attacks political corruption and injustice. He was educated at the universities of Ibadan, Dakar, and Paris. A professor of Drama since 1985 at the University of Ibadan, where he has spent most of his adult career, Osofisan was General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre Lagos. He has won prizes from the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) for both drama (1980) and poetry (1989), and in 2004 he was awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), the highest academic prize in Nigeria. An Introduction As contained in the play’s blurb, it is an African re-reading (i.e. adapted version) of Euripides’ classic, The Trojan Women . It was first commissioned by the Chi

A Weird Hope is my  novel, published by Century Research and Publishing Limited, Kano-Nigeria, 2012. STUDIOUS freshman Abubakar has a romantic notion that love and studies can be taken along simultaneously. In contrast, his  urbane confidant, Salim, regards doing so as an aberration and a threat to their future and lives. He defiantly flouts the admonishment. This eventually coincides with the time his consanguineous relationship with his ravishing cousin, Maryam Bako, develops into a full-pledged love relationship. Bako, Maryam’s conservative,   avaricious   father, forbids her to attend any school beyond the college, which she could only finish because of Abubakar’s help. She’s finally lured and vanquished into marriage with one rich, miscreant, Alhaji Usman alias Maisunan. The union has been arranged—typical practice among some traditional Hausa/Fulani communities—since she was a baby. Maryam’s father was indebted to what Maisunan’s father did to him when he was helpless.

First published on  KanoOnline Online Forum  on August 16, 2010 Virtually whoever knows or is aware of the  Kano   political situation is left wondering at the visible reversal of its opinions over the passage of each day. The state is of course famous of such unpredictability in politics. Yet this is unusually intriguing: the shunned and stoned away “Noah” now turns to a revered and august “Christ”; and likewise the other venerated “Christ” to a cast away monster. Thereof one cannot help asking both answered and unanswered questions to whoever cares to listen. Additionally, to the amazement of many, opposition parties of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the other newly born, though revolutionary one, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) can be said to have dominated the state’s political landscape currently (both parties, I fear, are no better: the latter a hub for power hungry actors; while the former, centre for Capitalists who have little or no concern for a common m

First published on  KanoOnline Online Forum  on the  24th of October, 2010 It’s nearly an election season in  Nigeria . Each and every political party has set before the people its products for buying or otherwise. Those of  Peoples Democratic Party  (PDP), the ruling party, especially of presidential seat, obviously seem to have attracted more attention and occupied wider political landscape. They include, among others, the incumbent president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and the former Head of State, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). The two, indisputably, remain the much-talked-about contenders and formidable challengers with the former crushing the party’s ‘unofficial’ policy of zoning—where the candidacy in 2011 is said to be zoned to North—and the latter objecting to the former’s aspiration. Other presidential hopefuls from the North of whom majority are barely ‘known’ beyond the Northern states include General Muhammad Buhari under the umbrella of Congress