The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim Department of English and French, Bayero University , Kano muhsin2008@gmail.com Abstract The paper seeks to answer some triggering questions on reading: why, when, what and how, through demonstrating to the students some of the many (positive) impacts of good reading culture, exploring the probable 'reasons' why students don’t, or hate to, read, and by offering ways on how to overcome such problems. In the discussion, the writer highlights on how achieving this would contribute to the development of the student’s academic pursuit, linguistic competence and performance, and life in general. In conclusion, a call is made to the “stakeholders” and the people in general to assist the students as their success means, in wider perspective, the nation’s success.   Being a Paper Presented at a Special Lecture Organized by the Department of English, Girls’ Science College, Garko, Kano; 03 rd March, 2013 INTRODUCTION The issue of ed...

Preamble The question on, if not the whole issue of, Indian Theatre, whether classical, folk, modern or whatever appendage is affixed to it raises eyebrows. Why? There was no India as known today prior to a certain and recent period of time, which is following the British colonial masters’ declaration of independence to a people who hitherto shared no language, religion, norm and culture; the group of people who were even sometimes hostile to one another. Many scholars and theatre historians and critics have intensely argued (and the argument still continuous) on the true origin, and, again, the existence of an all-encompassing concept called Indian theatre. Reasons ascribed to such contentions are many: Is this the Hindus’, or the Muslims’, the Sikhs’, the Buddhists’, or other religions’ performance that is more befitting to be tagged Indian Theatre? So also the ethnic dispensations; Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Bengali, etc all rightly belong to the India; or the recently emerged b...

This is a short-story culled from my novel, A Weird Hope (2012). It was, again, published in   Voices from the Savannah (2010), an anthology of the National Association of Language and Literary Studies, Bayero University , Kano Chapter, vol. 3.  It's told to a girl, Shahada by her nanny, Gwaggo. The story is about one of the latter’s peer’s eventual marital life. GWAGGO CLEARED her throat—emulating her master's (Shahada’s father) habit. “The story began when we were in our early youth, now about five decades ago. Surely I won't use her right name because she still lives; thus, let me call her Ummi, as the house-hold name in the Hausa communities, was betrothed to a young man called Audu. “Audu?” she tried to recall the exact name. “Yes Audu.” The gentleman was a common farmer like his father who was also a great scholar in our village. One day, a fortnight to their wedding, one of the eminent wealthy men living in the village heard about it through one of his ...

Dr. Salisu Shehu Department of Education Bayero University, Kano muhammadtafawabalewa@gmail.com sshehu2002@yahoo.com With all sense of modesty, I can proclaim that I belong to a generation of Muslim activists that were intellectually nurtured and brought up, and are still being influenced in a number of ways by, among other things, the brilliant weekly write-ups and commentaries of the likes of Mallam Adamu Adamu. In fact, Mallam Adamu stands out quite prominently among them. Having grown up and had my primary education in a village in the late sixties through the seventies, and even while at the teachers’ college in the early eighties I was never used to reading, not to talk of appreciating the value of newspapers. I got introduced to reading them when I set my foot in Bayero University Kano, as a student in the mid-eighties. Once initiated, I immediately got hooked up to Mallam Ibrahim Sulaiman’s Column and Mallam Adamu’s DEFINITIONS-IN-HUMOUR, both in the Sunday ...

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 comm...

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 wh...

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 con...