By Eugene Onyeji
Aminu Umar Mukhtar, a Kannywood movie director, has been declared wanted by the Kano state film censorship board over ‘Makaranta’, his latest film.
Mukhtar’s film which has not been approved was considered by the censorship board as having and promoting immoral content.
Na Abba Afakallah, the Executive Director of the censorship board, who made this known in an interview with BBC Pidgin, said the board had invited the filmmaker over the “immoral content” of the movie and the fact that the project did not get the body’s approval before going public.
He stated that Muktar was declared wanted after failing to honor repeated invitations by the board.
“The truth is that the whole process of that film did not get the backing of the board. Even the promotion video currently circulating ought to have been vetted by us. That way, we can say remove this part or that, but the filmmaker did neither of that.
Since he did not answer our invitation, we’ll take the next step because our board is about preserving the religion and culture of Kano and we won’t allow anyone to destroy that for us.”
Read Also: Kenyan Police officer commits suicide over alleged delay in December salary
Reacting to the allegations, Mukhtar said he remains unperturbed by the board’s invitation, insisting that he did nothing wrong. He argued that his movie was not only about the Hausa community and was not shot in Kano.
“When I heard that the board was looking for me, I was not disturbed at all because I did nothing wrong. My film is not about Kano or Hausa people alone, about 17 languages featured in the project. Moreover, I did not shoot the movie in Kano state. So, I don’t understand why their blood is hot over the issue.
My film is not only about sex education, it captures other things such as female genital mutilation. With the project, we aim to create awareness about things that are happening not only in Hausa societies but others as well.” he said
In the trailer of the film, which was two minutes 11 seconds long, students were seen in a school setting with one scene showing a female student telling the other about ‘Jima’i’ which means sex in Hausa. In another scene, another female student was seen announcing that she was pregnant with her colleague promising to help her handle the situation.
The last scene in the trailer showed the students in a typical party setting, with male and female colleagues dancing together to Hip-hop songs.
