Take Your Film Village to Yoruba Pagans Who want it – Sheik Abdallah to FG

Sheik Abdallah Usman Gadan Kanya, a Kano extremist preacher told the Nigerian Government to ‘Take Your Film Village to the Yoruba Pagans Who want it’.

Nigeria’s government yesterday cancelled plans to build a “film village” in the northern state of Kano after opposition from Muslim clerics and social media.

Films in the Hausa language are popular across northern Nigeria

More than $10m (£7.6m) had been budgeted to provide state-of-the-art facilities for the Hausa language film industry, known as Kannywood.

The government said the project would create thousands of job opportunities and promote cultural activities.

Muslims clerics however said that the project would promote immorality. People on social media also called on the government to stop the plan.

Finally Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari could not press ahead with his plan to build the film village in the mainly Muslim north once it faced opposition from influential Muslim clerics and their followers. 

In a televised sermon, posted on social media Sheik Abdallah Usman Gadan Kany said: “We have details of a plot in our state of Kano. There is a plan to establish a film village in Kofa, Bebeji local government area of Kano State. There is going to be massive preachings against it and lectures by Islamic clerics considering the danger coming with this. So the first benefit Muslims in Kano and Nigeria will get is the establishment of a national or international film village? In which from all parts of the world, people will be coming to Kofa to do film or drama. A southerner will come and do film in Kofa; a northerner will come and do film in Kofa. American will come and do film in Kofa, Indian will come and do a film in Kofa and Britons will come and do the same thing in Kofa. To come and practice immorality and destroy our values.

“They have earmarked billions of naira for the project that will stretch over an eight-kilometer complex…We are calling on all our writers to start writing against it. Southerners want the film village in their place, but they refused to take it there because they know there are Muslims in Kano, and they want to destroy our religion and values.

“Some Yoruba who are pagans want it, but they refused and insisted that it is in Kano State that they will establish it. We heard that it is one lawmaker that is bringing this calamity to us from Federal Government. Another mischief is that they have put the picture of the President and calling the place Muhammadu Buhari Film Village because they know people love Buhari and are supporting him. But Buhari is not Allah, and he is not [the] Prophet. Even if it is Buhari that did wrong we will confront him squarely. Even if it is Buhari that brings this we will fight it; it is wrong.

“Tell them, write it and propagate it through all the means. We don’t want it; we don’t need it. They should take it somewhere. We will continue to curse people behind this film village. You should campaign against it in WhatsApp, Facebook. If they insist, we have hot spiritual prayers that will bring curse and affliction to anyone. Very hot prayers that will cause blindness and make those involved deaf completely”, Sheik Abdallah Usman Gadan Kanya stated.

Muslims form the majority in northern Nigeria

It would have been political suicidal for Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari to press ahead with his plan to build a film village in the mainly Muslim north once it faced opposition from influential Muslim clerics and their followers, observers say. 

As Mr Buhari has strong support in the north, it became difficult for him to ignore the opposition once the clerics started using their weekly Friday sermons to condemn the plan as un-Islamic. 

They argued that the Hausa language film industry was corrupting the values of youth by promoting things like public romance and dancing, which are not part of the culture of Muslims in the north.

But many people are also bound to be dismayed by the decision because the films are extremely popular.

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