There was no inkling, even a few days to the revelation, as I landed in the city of Kano; many weeks prior, I had been working assiduously to get an audience with the Emir (Sanusi), for a project I was working on; I’d been hoping that he would grant me an interview, in his famed library in the Palace.
My reason for seeking an interview from him was founded on somewhat of a kindred spirit appeal, which drew me to his ideologies and his worldview.
When my crew and I rode past the Palace the first few days of our work, I felt a longing for that ideological kinship, forlornly wishing that I had been able to conclude all the stringent protocols for admission into the Palace before now.
And then, these protocols suddenly didn’t matter anymore; I received calls that the illustrious Mohammed Sanusi ii was no more the Emir of Kano – dethroned, unceremoniously, leaving a sense of brazen conniving hanging palpably in the air.
In no time the news was abroad in Kano, and with such rumours and conspiracy theories as are wont to attend to campaigns of such status For much of my life, I have been sorely concerned, indeed exasperated, by the culturally shackling belief systems held by the people of my descent; my parentage is one-half Fulani, (my mother is Kalabari, Rivers State) and I lean quite fairly towards my Fulani background, having grown up with my father in parts of Northern Nigeria; it is a rich and proud heritage.
The history is vivid and passionate; the language classical; and the bearing imperial – these are attributes one could be inspired by, if only they were not utterly conditioned by the belief systems that should have been left in the distant past where they belonged.
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As if the anachronism of patriarchy were not deplorable enough, Northern Nigeria consciously, religiously entrenches the exclusion, the suppression, and cancelling of women. This, for me, is the indelible blemish that perpetuates the backwardness of my people.
Women in Northern Nigeria are simply background ambience. Only to be tolerated; and Northern women, even among the quite enlightened and westernized, continue to tolerate this state of affairs for fellow women and girls, in order not to rock business boats… social status boats… status quo boats.
This systematic reduction of women and girls as a way of life is what I witnessed growing up, thankfully though, from behind the protected safety of my father’s fairly.
liberal command at home; I saw women intimidated into the backyards of houses; I saw girls denied the chance of formal education, as it is held that Western education is a ruin of women; I saw minors handed off to all kinds of men in forced marriages, and I saw the health of the married minors jeopardized.
And then I saw that I was discouraged from voicing my outrage at these troubling barbarisms; family members and friends and associates frowned at me when I frowned at the primitivism.
It is this methodical silencing of voices that I grew up in, only simmering under, hoping and searching for like-minded thinkers, and even more importantly, like-minded, public-spirited speakers against the dehumanization of women and girls.
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As I started out on my projects and campaigns, I looked around for other women of Northern extraction who would link up and form a stronger bond of women speaking out; we would have women’s backs; we would make our contributions to change the mindset, and influence a new generation of Northern girls who would help catapult the Northern culture into a brilliant future as is deserving.
Source: TheGuardian
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