132 african appropriations
beji did not go unheard. To appease their critics and to justify the moral
legitimacy of their video films, some filmmakers began to recast their
work in religious terms, as “admonition” (fa’ dakarwa) or “preaching”
(wa’azi), and publicly likened themselves to religious teachers. Filmmak-
ers now claimed to help malamai (religious learned men) to teach morals
(c f. K r i ngs 2 008). The ter m i nolog y of wa’azi and fa’ dakarwa is significant
in this context. Both terms have religious connotations, but at the time
under discussion, they were generally used to provide a moral justifi-
cation for any kind of cultural activity. Writing books and performing
music, for instance, were re-labeled in a similar fashion (Abdalla Uba
A d a mu , e m a i l , Ju ne 2 1 , 2 0 0 7). Wa’a z i (sermon, preaching, warning), much
more than fa’ dakarwa (admonishing, drawing attention to ill-considered
behavior), connotes religious authority because it uses quotations from
the Koran to support its arguments. Wa’z , which is the Arabic root of the
Hausa term wa’azi, is a genre of Islamic preaching that comes closest to
religious agitation. Though part of Nigeria’s Islamic vocabulary for a long
time, wa’azi of late has been more closely associated with northern Ni-
geria’s Wahhabi-inspired reform movements, based on ultraconservative
Sunni Islam. The most popular of these is the Jamâ’at Izâlat al-Bid’a wa
Iqâmat as-Sunna (Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstate-
ment of Tradition), founded by Abubakar Gumi in 1978, better known
under the Hausa acronym of ‘yan Izala (followers of Izala; Kane 2003;
Loimeier 1997).
Izala, as well as other reform groups, such as Sheik Aminudeen Abuba-
kar’s Daawa and Sheik Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky’s Ikhwan, which were founded
in the late 1970s on university campuses, used small, cassette-based media
to spread their messages. Though most filmmakers do not belong to any of
these religious groups, it is the reformists’ strategy of preaching through
cassette technology that was at the bottom of the filmmakers’ claim to
preach through films. The mere use of the same technology, however,
is not enough to make feature films comparable to wa’azi. Video film-
makers were therefore at pains to deduce the legitimacy of their craft
from religious sources, such as the Hadith or Koran. A paper presented
by producer, director, and actor Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama at the First
International Conference on Hausa Films, which took place in Kano in
2003, is instructive in this context. Titled “Matsayin Fina-Finan Hausa