Many losses of the pandemic era

One of the characteristics of this pandemic era is the large number of lives lost on a daily basis. Death is so much in the news and is everywhere that our empathy is gradually deadened. One is hardly aroused by deaths nowadays. Nevertheless, I could not but notice the loss of a number of actors that have over the years given me, and I guess many of my readers, considerable pleasures in their television programmes and films. Their departure is profoundly a loss both to the industry and to those of us who were appreciative of their talents.

In the month of May, I noted the loss of Daudu Galadanci who was widely proclaimed, at the time of his death, as a Kannywood veteran actor. I believe he was more than that. I would rather say he was an actor in Hausa films and in fact, one of the greatest. I first noticed the actor in the long running NTV Kaduna weekly Hausa drama series, Kuliya Manta Sabo, roughly translated as the law does not reckon with familiarity. It was a drama series that depicted the daily happenings and the shenanigans that went on in a local Alkali court. Daudu acted as the Alkali and the stories were crafted in such a way that he always saw through all the mischiefs, by litigants and officials alike in his court, to dispense justice without fear or favour. He always portrayed the best of the Alkali, sartorially dressed in an alkyabba (burnoose) and looking very dignified. Those who rated the series highly considered Daudu as the kind of actor, in the mould of Kasimu Yero, who brought realism to his roles.

Kuliya Manta Sabo was one of the most popular NTV Kaduna programmes of the 1970s. I recall that in the early 70s when I was an undergraduate in Kongo campus, ABU Zaria, I would leave whatever I was doing that night of the week, when it was billed to show, and come before the students’ TV in the refectory to await the programme. The story line was always centred around Daudu as the Alkali and you would swear that in real life he had not been anything else.  It was much later that I learnt that Daudu had spent most of his working life in the prisons as a warden. May be due to rounds of taking prisoners to the courts and spending time there, he was able to observe closely the Alkalis of the time and absorb their mannerisms.

Daudu Galadanci was born in 1934 in Kankarofi ward of Kano City. He had his elementary and middle schools in Kano city and thereafter trained to be a clerk. After some clerical jobs here and there, he joined the Nigerian Prisons where he worked as a warden till he retired in 1984. Even as a boy, Daudu had shown keen interest in drama from the word go. As a youth, he was involved in the 1950s in organising a drama group that was based in Galadiman Kano’s house. As the group became better known, they sought for higher platforms and reach, which in the late 1950s they got by linking up with, and getting absorbed into, the Maitama Sule Drama Group which had better funding and exposure. This drama group was initially formed in the late 1940s by Maitama Sule, then a teacher and an upcoming politician, with keen interest in the arts, particularly drama. The drama group had its patron by no less a person than the Emir of Kano, Abdullahi Bayero, who was even ready to extend official annual grants to them from the Treasury for the purchase of costumes and other materials for their plays.

Maitama Sule Drama group became well known, even beyond Kano, and would get to be invited, in 1963, to participate in the Northern Region Festival of Arts and Culture that was held for the first time in Kaduna. Their presentation, Bako Raba, Dan Gari Kaba, with Daudu playing one of the prominent roles, won the first prize, but more importantly for the actors they also became exposed to television. In a swift move, the regional television in Kaduna asked them to re-enact their play which was broadcast all over the North. The reception was so encouraging that Radio Television Kaduna (RKTV) decided to launch a TV drama series on the prevalent Sharia system of dispensing justice. The series, Kuliya Manta Sabo, with Daudu in the leading role as Alkali, became one of the most successful TV programmes in Hausa language showcasing aspects of the religion and culture of the North.

The series ran for years in Kaduna but moved to CTV Kano in the 1980s. In between, Daudu’s talents were in demand in other major Hausa films of the period. He played a role in the 1976 Hausa film, Shehu Umar which was an adaptation of the novel written by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s Prime Minister. Daudu also had a role in Kasar Muce the 1991 film by Sadiq Balewa. And when the Kannywood arrived at the turn of the millennium, Daudu was conveniently placed in Kano to take on roles in their films.

Another death that struck me was that of Derek Fowls, the last of the engaging trio that acted in the 1980s BBC sitcom, Yes Minister and its sequel, Yes Prime Minister. Derek, Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne acted in that hilarious series that caricatured the relationship between Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries and the eternal struggle between elected politicians and the civil service mandarins. Derek acted as Bernard Woolley, the Principal Private Secretary (PPS) to the Minister, Jim Harker, a role played by Paul Eddington. Derek always found himself in the middle between the Minister and the ebullient Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne. Paul Eddington died in 1995 while Nigel Hawthorne passed away in 2001. Now, Derek, the last surviving of the trio has bowed out in January this year.

I was a post-graduate student in Swansea University in the United Kingdom, when the first in the series of Yes Minister was aired in February 1980 and I was immediately enamoured by its content. Even when I returned home, I kept faith with the entire series and its sequel. The series was immensely popular in the UK where it was reported that even the reigning Prime Minister, then Margaret Thatcher, was a keen follower. In fact, she allowed access to No 10 Downing Street, office and residence of the Prime Minister, to the film crew whenever they needed to see the inside for the set designer to copy. Paul Eddington, who acted as Minister, and Prime Minister in the sequel, was times and again given access to pass through the famous front door with the no. 10 inscribed on it.

I guess many politicians and civil servants of that generation in Nigeria followed the series also. Public servants who followed the series at every stage had imagined themselves in either of the three roles. One could picture himself as a stressed Bernard, the PPS, perennially caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to be loyal to his Minister and deferring to the whims and caprices of the Permanent Secretary who holds the key to his advancement in the civil service. Or one could see himself as Sir Humphrey, the Permanent Secretary preserving the status quo or as the overwhelmed Jim Hacker, the Minister trying unsuccessfully to push through some party policy or effect departmental changes opposed to the civil service. In all these titanic struggles, Bernard the PPS was always the fall guy. Derek acted that role with the same amount of equanimity that would have been required in real life.