DIVExamines the role of media technologies in shaping urban Africa through an ethnographic study of popular culture in northern Nigeria./div

Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria tells the story of Islamic reform from the perspective of dress, textile production, trade, and pilgrimage over the past 200 years. As Islamic reformers have sought to address societal problems such as poverty, inequality, ignorance, unemployment, extravagance, and corruption, they have used textiles as a means to express their religious positions on these concerns. Home first to the early indigo trade and later to a thriving textile industry, northern Nigeria has been a center for Islamic practice as well as a place where everything from women's hijabs to turbans, buttons, zippers, short pants, and military uniforms offers a statement on Islam. Elisha P. Renne argues that awareness of material distinctions, religious ideology, and the political and economic contexts from which successive Islamic reform groups have emerged is important for understanding how people in northern Nigeria continue to seek a proper Islamic way of being in the world and how they imagine their futures—spiritually, economically, politically, and environmentally.

This unique collection of articles on literature in northern Nigeria is in three parts. Part one presents an overview of the running theme, in which Na’Allah explores the theoretical relationship between literature, history and identity in northern Nigeria, using the proverbial story of the blind man who holds a lamp while walking alone in the night. Similarly, Tsiga undertakes in a long bibliographical essay, a notable survey of the relationship between literature, history and identity in northern Nigeria, chronicling the development of life writing in the region dating back three hundred years. Part two focuses on the relationship between literature and history in northern Nigeria and begins with the article in which Illah investigates the theme. He uses the image of the bus to underscore the point he makes concerning the uniqueness of northern Nigerian literature, which continues its journey, even without a spare tyre. Equally in this part, Balogun discusses Yerima’s Attahiru, Ameh Oboni: The Great as theatres of colonial resistance; just as Methuselah also examines the heroism celebrated in Ahmed Yerima’s Attahiru. Adamu revisits the trans-fictional use of the Grimm Brothers’ tale in the early published Hausa written narratives, while Yunusa and Malumfashi examine similar historical concerns in Abubakar Imam and Sa’adu Zungur, respectively. This part concludes with Garba assessing the transformation of the written Hausa prose narratives into radio broadcasts; while Abiodun examines in a historiographic survey the various forms and composition of Ilorin music. In what might have been the scholar’s last conference article before his sudden death, Nasidi, in Part three, opens the debate on literature and identity in northern Nigeria, eloquently theorising on the relationship with Foucault, his favourite philosopher. AbdulRaheem illustrates how the literature of the people of Ilorin is their identity marker, while Kazaure investigates the split character in Labo Yari’s Man of the Moment. Ibrahim explores identity in marriage between migrants and natives in Kanchana Ugbabe’s Soul Mates, while Aondofa investigates globalisation and indigenous television. Using Tiv film typology, like Aondofa, Sulaiman examines the use of diction in characterisation in the film industry. The third of the contributors on the film industry, AbdulBaqi, uses films shown on DSTV’s African Magic channels to investigate matrimonial harmony in North Central Nigeria. Jaji revisits the antecedents and prospects in the relationship between prose and identity in northern Nigeria. Giwa offers a detailed investigation of Zaynab Alkali’s The Initiates on gender politics. Similarly, Muhammad and Muhammad are concerned with identity and the gender politics in Bilkisu Abubakar’s To Live Again and The Woman in Me. The last article in the book, jointly written by Yusuf, Anwonmeh and Agulonye, offers the only viewpoint on children’s literature in northern Nigeria.

“A Nigerian bildungsroman featuring Dantala, a street kid thrust calamitously into the arms of a gentle sheikh, who thereafter faces Islamic extremism.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, “10 Titles to Pick Up Now” Winner of the 2017 Betty Trask Prize A Finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature Nominated for 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award An Indies Introduce Selection An Amazon Best Book of the Month in Literature & Fiction Longlisted for the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature In far northwestern Nigeria, Dantala lives among a gang of street boys who sleep under a kuka tree. During the election, the boys are paid by the Small Party to cause trouble. When their attempt to burn down the opposition’s local headquarters ends in disaster, Dantala must run for his life, leaving his best friend behind. He makes his way to a mosque that provides him with food, shelter, and guidance. With his quick aptitude and modest nature, Dantala becomes a favored apprentice to the mosque’s sheikh. Before long, he is faced with a terrible conflict of loyalties, as one of the sheikh’s closest advisors begins to raise his own radical movement. When bloodshed erupts in the city around him, Dantala must decide what kind of Muslim—and what kind of man—he wants to be. “An ambitious book that tackles modern Nigeria’s extremely complex religious landscape with great insight, passion, and humor by taking us deep into the mental and emotional space of the country’s most neglected.” —Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation

This book explores from various perspectives how the literature of the northern region of Nigeria has promoted the ideology of integration and societal resurgence. Through the diverse cultural productions from this very heterogenous socio-political region, researchers have dissected the portrayals and characterisations of ideologies which foster harmony among the people who speak a multitude of languages and have an array of cultural practices. These contributions bring to the fore the multiple roles that both indigenous literary productions and those adapted from foreign elements have played in realising social and cultural integration and advancing collective values of the people of Northern Nigeria. This collection of essays is the result of a selection of scholarly contributions to two national conferences on Literature on Northern Nigeria held at the Kwara State University, Malete in 2015 and 2016.

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.