By Habibu Maaruf Abdu
Since the middle of the previous week, the trending news on Kannywood have been revolving around a racy film entitled Makaranta. The Kano censorship board has reportedly chased the film director, Aminu Nasara, for releasing the uncensored film trailer which embodies obscene contents.
The trailer starts with a school setting, and a female voice is heard talking about Jima’i (which means ‘sex’) crudely without euphemism. Two female students are then shown conversing in a classroom where one of them is advising the other in a vulgar dialogue as follows:
“Banda tsabar sakarci da dolanci kawai kina zaune har ya buɗe jaka ya ɗauki bireziya baki Sani ba. Idan kikai wasa da wannan dolancin kina sakin baki wataran sai ya cire miki pant…”
“If not for a sheer foolishness, why would you just sit there while he opened a bag and took the bra without you knowing. Unless you are careful, he would, one day, take your panties off…”
The aforementioned are just a few of the many vulgarities in the trailer. So, if the two-minute-long trailer alone is this bad, how do you expect the full film to be? Males and females are even shown touching one another and licentiously dancing in some scenes!
No doubt, such despicable movies are a threat to the well being of our society. They have a negative influence on, especially, the young generation, and could dent our beautiful reputation as the Hausa Muslim pupulace. A film is a reflection of the society where it’s produced. I, therefore, strongly condemn the immoral film. It’s insolent to make such a film and all those involved should be brought to book.
Although the film director is trying to dissociate it from the mainstream Kannywood, his claims are unacceptable because, the film is mainly in the Hausa language, and many of its characters are portrayed as Hausa Muslims (We hear names like Luba, Saudat and Suwaiba). The society, therefore have every right to follow it up since it’s something which, they think, could tarnish their image. The director is thus subject to both the public outrage and censors punishment. The National Film and Video Censors Board should collaborate with their Kano counterpart to not only ban this film, but also impose total ban on all films of similar kind.
I will conclude by commending the efforts of the Kano censorship board in sanitizing Kannywood. I call on them to devise more extreme punishment in dealing with the perpetrators of immorality in the industry. This would serve as a deterrent to others.
The writer can be reached via habibumaaruf11@gmail.com
