br anding bin laden 179vated mainly by taxi and minibus drivers. Even though there was only a
limited assortment of pictorial stickers, the overall choice of motifs was
broad enough to enable diverse groups of people to communicate their
religious or political associations. Supporters of the Muslim orthodox
Izala decorated their vehicles with the portrait of Abubakar Gumi, the
founder of that movement, while the cars of Sufi brotherhood followers
boasted the faces of their respective sheikhs. Youth who wanted to ex-
press their antiestablishment attitude, emblazoned their motorbikes with
stickers of Muhammadu Buhari, the military ruler whose brief term in
office (January 1984 to August 1985) stood for radical measures against
corrupt elites. Others used stickers of their favorite Bolly wood stars to
express their sense of modernity. The fact that the stickers were prefer-
entially placed on means of transport increased their circulation and
visibility. The stickers became iconic representations of the attitudes of
those displaying them.
I n t h is conte x t, facia l com mu n icat ion is i n l i ne w it h a st rateg y of v isua l
communication widely used particularly in propaganda and advertising.
Even though there were still no “torrents of facial images” comparable to
those some observers have noted for the cities of the Global North (Macho
1996: 26), I noticed a remarkable increase in the use of faces for promo-
tional purposes in northern Nigerian towns between 2000 and 2003. Due
to the spread of digital technology, the reproduction and distribution of
cultural material became much cheaper at the time, which was one of the
reasons the global iconic turn in cultural production became palpable in
northern Nigeria as well. In addition, local cultural production, notably
the video film industry, witnessed a boom around 2000 (Haynes 2000).
With the emergence of “stars” in the Hausa video film industry, for ex-
ample, the faces of film stars were featured prominently on promotional
movie posters in an attempt to attract audiences. The booming telecom-
munications business significantly expanded the spaces hitherto avail-
able for billboard advertising and also capitalized on the faces of film
stars, using them for the purpose of product endorsement. Political parties
stopped using simple symbols as icons of their parties, as they had done
in the past, but complemented their canvasing during election campaigns
with the prominent display of candidates’ faces on T-shirts, stickers, post-
ers, and banners. It is safe to say that around 2001 the visual publics of