Introduction^{Footnote 1}

The early years of the Hausa language newspaper Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo, the first newspaper entirely^{Footnote 2} in Hausa, have been preserved, digitized and made available since 2013 for online use by the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) of the British Library in cooperation with Arewa House Centre for Regional Documentation of Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, and the College of Humanities, Hirosaki University in Japan. These issues of Gaskiya are important not only for historians but for linguists, scholars of African literature and others. Gaskiya inspired the change of Hausa from a predominately premodern, handwritten manuscript Arabic orthography language to a predominately modern, printed, Roman script language. Gaskiya also created the contemporary grammatical, lexical and stylistic standard of Hausa. The early years of Gaskiya are also a unique documentation of African understanding of the Second World War.

Gaskiya was also important during the Second World War for providing information to Nigerians. It both documented and shaped the attitudes of Africans to the war, not only because it was written and read by Africans but also because it published their letters, especially from the soldiers overseas describing their experiences, and also answered their questions about the war. It also carried much domestic news, not only from Hausa speaking areas of Northern Nigeria but from other parts of the country as well. Gaskiya thus documents the early emergence of Nigerian nationalism, and how Nigerian experiences in the war, and Nigerians’ exposure to the outside world, helped to generate and sustain the nationalist movement that led the country to independence after the war.

These unique materials were in very poor condition and in imminent danger of being entirely lost. The newspaper itself did not have a complete collection in its office and the Nigerian National Archives (Kaduna) has no copies at all from the earliest years of Gaskiya. The only complete collection was in Arewa House Center for Regional Documentation in Kaduna. These copies were poorly bound in a binding which cut right through the text of most pages. They were physically disintegrating. They needed to be unbound, digitized, and placed into protective plastic as soon as possible, before this valuable historical source was lost forever.^{Footnote 3}

Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo in the Second World War

The early years of Gaskiya represent a unique documentation of African understanding of and attitudes toward the Second World War. These early issues contain letters from Nigerian service members describing their experiences overseas, as well as the experiences of Africans on the home front. These early issues of Gaskiya show how Nigerian experiences in the war, and Nigerians’ exposure to the outside world, helped to generate and sustain the nationalist movement that led to independence in a few decades. It documents the awakening of the people of Nigeria, especially in the north, to a world beyond their borders and their local world as they became aware of issues beyond the local region.

The availability of Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo will improve the study of African participation in the Second World War from the African perspective to the extent that they used sources published in African languages. While the newspaper Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo was begun by the colonial government and served the purposes of war propaganda, it was not only written by Africans but also became the major source of information about the war for the population of Northern Nigeria, where Hausa was the lingua franca and medium of administration, and where English language literacy had been kept deliberately low by the colonial government.

Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo began publication in January 1939. The colonial government, on orders of the governor, founded Gaskiya. This newspaper became extremely influential in Hausa literature as the style of its first editor and primary author, Abubakar Imam, would become the inspiration for a new generation of Hausa writers, most of whom imitated, but few of whom could equal, the liveliness and expressiveness of his prose. As Rupert East, Senior Education Officer at the Literature Bureau, put it at the time in nominating Abubakar Imam for the post: “Malam Abubakar has a style of his own which is quite different from the academic and generally lifeless writing of his predecessors, and which will almost certainly have a tremendous influence on future Hausa literature.”^{Footnote 4} The newspaper was originally a monthly publication to replace the Northern Nigerian Newsletter, a trilingual publication in English, Arabic, and Hausa. It was intended to counter German and Italian propaganda in Africa and to contribute to the war effort. It therefore needed to be more popular in style than its predecessor, and exclusively vernacular in language.^{Footnote 5}

From the early days of the paper the African editor had a running battle with the colonial administration and the missionary press that actually printed the paper. In his memoirs, Abubakar Imam gave the example of his wanting to use the phrase “Annabi Isa” (“prophet Jesus”) which the missionaries would not agree to. This was settled with the compromise of calling him “Jesus son of Mary” since both Muslims and Christians could agree on the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. Such compromises would be a regular feature of Gaskiya’s policies throughout the colonial era.^{Footnote 6}

Of course Africans had their own interest in the Allied war effort. Since the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 and the failure of the League of Nations to act, the African freedom movement had of necessity become an anti-fascist movement, as it had been an anti-racist movement from the beginning. The Allied war effort of the United Nations involved a broad coalition of countries, ranging from the Soviet Union to the democracies of western Europe and America, the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek in China, and Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League in India. All had their own motives for supporting the war and their own goals in fighting it. The African people of Nigeria were part of this united effort against the Axis. The Northern Nigerian perspective on the Second World War was developed by Abubakar Imam, the Hausa editor and main author of Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo.

The first issue of Gaskiya, dated January 1939, contained a fictional dialogue between a boy and a teacher (Malam) about the war crisis in Europe. The boy wanted to know the truth of the rumor that Nigeria had been handed over to German rule. The teacher disabused him of the rumor, and proceeded to briefly explain the European situation from the end of the “Great War” (known in Hausa as “the Cameroon War”) through the foundation of the League of Nations to the rise of Hitler and his annexation of Austria and demands on Czechoslovakia. The teacher ended by pointing out that every time Hitler was appeased his cantankerousness only increased, and that the King of England had promised that Nigeria would not be handed over to Hitler without the consent of the black people living in the country.

By the second issue of Gaskiya, in February 1939, European news had moved to the front page. It reported that Hitler might be becoming more reasonable. The Prime Minister (Wazir) of England was reportedly happy at German declarations, but that he would not agree to anything without definite acts to back up German guarantees, for example by reducing armaments. Suspicions of German intentions remained, among Europeans for their continued production of war materiel, and among Americans for the anti-Semitic campaigns. Even Germans were growing tired of Hitler, both for his suppression of dissent, and for the inability to obtain luxury goods. The same issue carried news about conflicts between Jews and Arabs in Palestine (with a promise of further details to come), and a brief explanation of the Spanish Civil War. The King of Saudi Arabia was referred to as the King of Mecca, and the King of Iraq as the King of Bagdad.

The May issue of Gaskiya not only carried details of the various European responses to Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia, but also the news of the passing away of King Hussein of Saudi Arabia. The sixth issue of Gaskiya, in June, announced a peace agreement between the British and the Turkish government (Santambul) that would aid contacts with the USSR and Romania. It also reported on the Italian conquest of Albania and Mussolini’s claim to be a friend of Muslims by noting the negative response of the Syrian government to Mussolini’s annexation of Albania. It was reported that 30,000 people thronged the Umayyad mosque in Damascus shouting that there was no god but God, and Mussolini was his enemy. Furthermore, according to Gaskiya, there was nothing that the people of Egypt wanted as much as for the Arabs and Jews of Palestine to unite in support of the British army that was there in the event of an Italian attack on Egypt. Furthermore an agreement was reported that would give the Arabs two thirds of Palestine, with independence to come within ten years.

The seventh issue of Gaskiya, in July, carried the newspaper’s first map of the conflict. This map showed most of Europe, and extended to Mecca and Medina in the far lower right. The northern reaches of Nigeria itself were in the far lower right. Hitler’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia was clearly marked. By anyone unfamiliar with European politics, but concerned with Mecca, Medina and the Middle East, Hitler’s intention to march through Turkey, Syria and Jerusalem to eventually annex Mecca could easily have been inferred. This map was reprinted again in subsequent issues. The same issue included a photograph of Hitler giving the Nazi salute, and an explanation of the Japanese war with China. Japan was explained as a country east of Mecca, east even of China (Sin).

In discussing the dispute over Danzig in the next issue, Gaskiya acknowledged that the people of Danzig were of German extraction and that before the last war they had been under German administration. It even acknowledged that the majority on the city council in Danzig supported Hitler. The issue was whether Poland could be safe if Hitler were able to take Danzig and move troops there. The story concluded with a long quotation from Prime Minister Chamberlain’s speech to the House of Commons, translated into Hausa. The issue also contained a large photograph of Saudi King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, together with his biography.

The actual outbreak of war in Europe in September of 1939 increased the coverage that Gaskiya gave to the conflict. The front page headlines for October and November were “War News.” The newspaper’s idiosyncratic interpretations of the war continued.

However, not idiosyncratic, but politically highly relevant were the first reports of Nigerian casualties from the East African campaign against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia: these were reported as the deaths of martyrs, a practice which would continue throughout the war, as Nigerians were moved to the Burma front against Japan.

Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo continued to report on all aspects of the war, including the role it played in the emancipation of women, from the appearance of women as firefighters in Britain to the presence of women fighters among the Italian partisans who joined the Allied war effort. However, as the war dragged on and Nigerians were more and more fighting in the Pacific, news from the Pacific and Indian Oceans came to be more and more prominent in the pages of Gaskiya. In addition to news from the front Gaskiya began to publish letters from soldiers in Burma. As casualties mounted, the lists became mere columns of serial numbers, ranks and names.

The story of the Second World War as told in Gaskiya ta fi Kwabo could be explored in many different ways, for example the coverage it gave to each of the major combatants could be explored in detail. The role of the war, and of Gaskiya itself, in fostering an increase in African demands for participation in government is another important story. The significance of the war for Muslims was also something that Gaskiya stressed as well, despite the presence of many Christians in the Nigerian military. A reader of the newspaper could easily be forgiven for not realizing that Saudi Arabia did not enter the war until 1945, since Gaskiya so constantly stressed its friendship with the British. The Japanese were routinely referred to as the Arnan Japan (“Japanese pagans”), which would of course have been pejorative in the eyes of Christian troops as well as Muslims. A photograph of Emperor Hirohito was captioned “Behold Hirohito, the ‘Allah’ of the Japanese. Now he alone remains among the great enemies of freedom.”^{Footnote 7}

Gaskiya after the Second World War

After the end of the war Gaskiya continued to report on the war and the role of Muslims in it. The visit of the Saudi Minister of Defence (Sarkin Yak’i), Alhaji General Muhamman Darik Sani, visited his native town of Wurno in Northern Nigeria. General Sani had left the town forty-three years before, when it was still part of the Sokoto Caliphate, along with his brother and father, to seek learning in north Africa. He enlisted in the Ottoman military, saw service in the Balkan Wars and in the First World War, and later fought for Ethiopia against the Italian invasion, before being asked to head the Saudi military in the Second World War, according to Gaskiya. General Sani recommended to the youth of Nigeria that they seek their fortune in the Middle East, since there was no racial discrimination against them there.^{Footnote 8}

Gaskiya not only shaped the attitudes of Africans to the war, it also helped to generate and sustain the nationalist movement. As a result of Gaskiya’s popularity during the Second World War and after, Romanized Hausa script, or Boko, became more popular than Arabic script and began to predominate. The spelling, grammar, vocabulary and style used in Gaskiya became the standard Hausa, and was later used in literacy campaigns. Hausa as used not only in other newspapers and books but as spoken on the radio and later television also owes much to the standard developed by early issues of Gaskiya.⁹