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Journal of Literature Advances

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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jla.2026.12.004

Film, Gender, and Censorship in Northern Nigeria

Rukayat N. Banjo

Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, Bayero University, Kano 700281, Nigeria.

*Corresponding author: Rukayat N. Banjo

Published: July 31, 2026

Abstract

This study examines the cinematic philosophy of the Hausa film industry vis-à-vis en/gendered spaces, film production, and censorship. It argues that film and video censorship in northern Nigeria is double-edged; stunting the growth of industry on one hand and maintaining a ‘charlatanist’ morality on the other. It draws on neo-historicism as a theoretical premise to contend that the manner and ways Kannywood films are censored delimit the functions of films as a vehicle of social correction and cultural engineering. It concludes that the cinematic culture of the Hausa film industry is at the crossroads: between staying with its own idealization of traditional modernity or the postmodern cinema; either way, the industry is programmed to be altered from the authentic self that the Kano State Censors Board (KSCB) is created to protect.

Keyword

Cultural politics; en/gendered; film censorship; Hausa cinema, media; morality

References

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Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

How to cite this paper

Film, Gender, and Censorship in Northern Nigeria

How to cite this paper: Rukayat N. Banjo. (2026). Film, Gender, and Censorship in Northern Nigeria. Journal of Literature Advances3(2), 126-132.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jla.2026.12.004