Getting Out of the Woods: Girl-Child Education and the Space of the Female in North-East Nigeria in Zaynab Alkali’s The Stillborn

Citation: Muhammad DAHIRU, Ph.D. (2022). Getting Out of the Woods: Girl-Child Education and the Space of the Female in North-East Nigeria in Zaynab Alkali’s The Stillborn. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 10, Number 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660

GETTING OUT OF THE WOODS: GIRL-CHILD EDUCATION AND THE SPACE OF THE FEMALE IN NORTH-EAST NIGERIA IN ZAYNAB ALKALI’S THE STILLBORN

By

Muhammad DAHIRU, Ph.D.

Abstract

There are limits to spaces females can occupy economically, traditionally, and socially due to cultural and religious demands in northern Nigeria. The paper examines how Alkali negotiates these spaces in her seminal novel The Stillborn. A combination of some feminist approaches with M.M. Bakhtin’s polyphonic narrative framework is adopted for the discussion. The paper argues that although a major challenge faced by the female in northeast Nigeria is acquiring formal education due to cultural, religious, and social obstacles, it is invariably the education that can liberate her in both the public and private spaces in society. The paper concludes that Alkali’s authorial intention in the novel stresses that formal or western education is the Deus ex machina to get the female ‘out of the woods’.

Introduction

The agency of the African woman has been copiously studied in literary, sociological, and cultural discourses. While some postcolonial writers and critics attribute the subjugation of the female subject in the modern space to the effect of colonialism (Petersen, 1984; Herbert, 2014), others attribute the suppression of the African female in the traditional space to the patriarchal cultures that confined her to the margin (Uchendu, 1995). Quite often, critics attempt to deconstruct how writers negotiate the agency of their characters in the modern and traditional spaces in fictional spaces. Most critical studies conclude that acquiring formal education is invariably a deus ex machina female writers in Nigeria adopt as the plot device to get their female characters ‘out of the woods’, and the denouement that untangles them from the social, economic, and cultural yoke of exclusion and suppression. To be in the woods idiomatically represents being in an uncertain situation or difficulty. Hence, the English saying ‘out of the woods’ denotes getting out of a state of uncertainty, danger, or trouble. The Woods is also the traditional African bush, which Emily Marshall notes is ‘a place of chaotic wild forces, full of spirits and superhuman beings who threatened humankind’ (Marshall, 2007, p. 36).

This paper takes ‘getting out of the woods’ to denote an attempt by Alkali to negotiate her characters out of the difficult and uncertain position of being a female, and her attempt to get herself, as the author, out of the uncertainty about the possibilities of evolving her feminist agency and Islamic values in The Stillborn (1984).

The Liminal Position of Alkali and the Polyphonic Framework

‘Polyphony’ is a concept M.M Bakhtin derived through a metaphor of music - poly (many) and phonus (sound). The author of a polyphonic novel is like the concertmaster who orchestrates all other sounds and voices and directs their interactions but remains from the outside. Bakhtin states that there is not just one narrator, but many ‘consciousnesses’ in a polyphonic novel, which tell the story through different ideologies and ideologemes. As Makovski, (1997, p. 22) notes, ‘the concept of polyphony encompasses an approach to narrative, a theory of creative process, and a representation of human freedom’. By ‘human freedom’, Makovsky refers to the freedom that characters enjoy through their multiplicity of voices. Polyphony built around voices in the novel makes it ‘dialogic through and through’ because ‘dialogic relationships exist among all elements of [its] novelistic structure’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 40). Robyn McCallum explains that polyphony ‘acquires a specific meaning, referring to the construction of dialogical interrelationships between speakers and voices represented in narrative’ (McCallum, 1999, p. 12).

Like the Egyptian female writer, Nawal Al Sadawi, and that of Senegal, Mariama Ba, Alkali struggles with an ambivalent identity as a postcolonial, African, Muslim, female writer. The idea of Islamic feminism attributed to them as Muslim female writers has invariably generated controversy among feminist academic scholars (Moghadam, 2000). The polemic is on their approach to issues related to women’s rights caught between the conflict and confluence between religion and culture and feminist ideology (Hitchcock, 1993). Mary E. Modupe Kolawale states that the ‘unique nature of the problem’ that Muslim female writers face in African feminist writing is the conservative Islamic values in the societies they write in, which conflict with their feminist ideals (Kolawole, 1997, p. 84).

 In the case of Alkali, this may be due to two reasons: First, in her writings, she avoids censorship sanctions by being radically opposed to females’ dependence on males in the Northern Nigerian patriarchal culture, which is highly religious-influenced. So, a radical approach may contradict religious injunctions and invoke the wrath of the religious and civil authorities. In addition, as a Muslim writer Alkali may avoid being accused of defending the Islamic tradition that she believes in, and which she might be supporting. Taking these together, she would find in a polyphony or dialogical framework a way to present a multiplicity of perspectives about a female space in her culture in order to avoid ‘the build-up of resentment and retribution’ (Marshall, 2007, p. 34) for her standpoint.

Secondly, Alkali, like most other African feminists, is not comfortable with the general nomenclature ‘feminism’ in describing fiction written by women (Brockes, 2017; Garba, 2006). So, only a dialogical construction of different traditional, modern, and religious voices opposing and supporting social, cultural, and economic issues affecting her female characters’ space may securely define her feminist position in her fiction.

The paper, therefore, deploys a polyphonic reading of The Stillborn because it is a valid frame for Alkali to negotiate her ambivalent scope as a northern Nigerian Muslim female writer. As Homi Bhabha reveals, ambivalence is a stimulant of cultural productivity (Bhabha, 1984), and so a dialogic critical analysis through a polyphonic reading becomes an appropriate and valid literary framework for the study of Alkali’s novels. The paper examines this ambivalence as a significant tool in locating Alkali’s womanist intention and in defining her liminal position on cultural issues affecting the female in northeastern Nigeria in The Stillborn (1984).

The Stillborn and the northern Nigerian female

In all her works, Alkali offers a rare insight into the lives of Muslim women in northern Nigeria, which comprises different ethnicities and cultural affiliations. Although Alkali is from the Tula-Wazila ethnic tribe in northeastern Nigeria, she often adopts the Hausa cultural traditions, like most other tribes living in the northern Nigerian region, in her fiction. Hausa denotes both a people and an ethnic group. It has the largest number of first-speakers and second-speakers in sub-Saharan Africa. There are about 25 million Hausa first-language speakers and close to 50 million second-Hausa language speakers (Pawlak, 1998, p. 6) from across Africa and the diaspora. The Hausa language is spoken by people who are not originally Hausas because it has become the lingua franca among all minor languages in northern Nigeria and Niger (Forkel et al, 2016). Most speakers of Hausa are Muslims and so their culture is also governed by Islamic ideals. There are, however, some Hausa speakers that are non-Muslims among the diverse tribes in the region, but who are nevertheless also influenced by the Hausa culture that has occupied a dominant position in the region (Forkel et al, 2016).

  Studies adopting different frames have revealed how Alkali builds a vision for a better life based on economic independence, self-sacrifice, and solidarity between men and women in northern Nigeria (Parekh & Jagne, 1998, p. 42-43). Polyphony remains the dialogic frame for the study of her fiction because it accommodates her different ideological voices in negotiating the spaces of the northern Nigerian woman without stepping on any toes.

A study by Gretchen Elizabeth Kellough reveals that in the past, feminist critics read ‘texts through a Western lens that valorise[d] individualism and separateness, while subjectivity in these texts stresses a larger participation with family, society, and nation’ (Kellough, 2008, p. 222). A model of reading that she proposes as a more valid frame is ‘tisseroman’, which she coined as a neologism to mean a ‘narrative quilt of a story-weaving’ of the community that ‘represents the interplay of multiple voices rather than one single voice’ (Kellough, 2008, p. 222). In another study by Amase et al, Alkali’s The Stillborn and The Virtuous Woman were appraised with the aim to locate the ‘universal feminist appeal’ in the two texts (Amase, et al, 2004, p. 188). While the former study by Kellough focused on the unique narratorial frame to study female texts, the latter study by Amase et al focused on what makes a female text ‘feminist’. The polyphonic frame can fit both studies.

 A critical study by Umelo Ojinmah and Sule Egya examined the chronology of the themes in all of Alkali’s novels and conclude that the recurring message is that ‘the female child should not be eternally dependent on marriage as an answer to all her needs’ (Ojinmah & Egya, 2005, p.1). In a similar study on the themes of Alkali’s novels, Rotimi Johnson explores her social vision and concludes that she goes beyond the emancipation of women to include the transformation of a traditional society into a modern one. Johnson argues that Alkali captures this social vision through ‘dreams, proverbs, philosophical diction, self-knowledge, the examination of past events, and illumination from sad experiences of the characters (Johnson, 1988, p. 649). Taking both studies together, they both focus on the narratorial apparatuses, which are all features of a dialogic novel. An answer to how Alkali wants to make her female characters independent of men in social, economic, and cultural spaces and the study of the appropriate narratorial frame she adopted to do so are what this paper hopes to corroborate through the polyphonic dialogic frame.

Grace Oche Okereke identifies what she calls the three stages of the female protagonist’s rite of passage to independence in The Stillborn. These are: ‘the incipient stage of domestic revolt, the adolescent stage of marital subsumption and revolt, and the mature stage of self-assertion and reconciliation’ (Okereke, 1996, p. 98). This classification aptly captures the three principal character’s progression to independence through acquiring formal education in The Stillborn. The manner in which education empowers and liberates the characters in the private and public, traditional and modern as well as city and village spaces through these stages are discussed in this paper.

Female Education and Getting Out of the Woods in the Stillborn

The Stillborn is Alkali’s debut novel that broke the literary silence of feminist fiction from northern Nigeria (Bookshy, 2004). There was virtually no feminist fiction recounting the experience of the northern Nigerian woman in the English language before Alkali wrote The Stillborn. As Margaret Hauwa Kassam noted, ‘lack of adequate education, especially, seems to be the biggest cause for the limitation of literary works by women from this part of the country’ (Kassam, 1996, p. 122). The fear shared by the predominant Muslims in the region was that the new formal education was a device to ‘Christianise’ the already Muslim populace, and so the people were disinclined to it (Bookshy, 2004). It may be argued that the aversion to formal education in the northeast is manifested in Boko Haram’s antagonism to female education in the region.

The Stillborn derives its title reference from the dreams and aspirations of the three central female characters: Li, Awa, and Faku. They all aspire to blissful life at the beginning of the novel. The main plot revolves around Li, and the story opens when she is a thirteen-year-old returning home after completing her primary education. The story ends when she is a grandmother, aged over fifty. The story of these characters runs through nine chapters and an Epilogue presented in analepsis and prolepsis to recount the various experiences of the characters through Li’s eyes. These experiences are presented through a combination of anachronism, digression, gaps, and lacuna, all offering different perspectives on female cultural spaces in northern Nigeria.

The story of The Stillborn is told between the nameless village Li inhabits and the city. Between these spaces is the “Woods”, in which on a particular occasion all three female characters, with their future husbands, meet to “dialogise” about blissful life. When Li mentions to Habu that she, along with Awa and Faku, is going to the woods in a week, Habu invites Dan Fiama and Garba for the rendezvous (p. 41-42). While in the Woods, these six characters sit down for a ‘great dialogue’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 71), and the space becomes significant in locating the plural composition of their voices on northeast Nigerian female’s cultural space and agency. It is within this “in-betwixt space” that the characters engage in a dialogue about what constitutes female cultural agency. This dialogue creates a 'plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 6). This type of character consciousness, as Caryl Emerson explains, is ‘not just words or ideas strung together: it is a ‘semantic position, a point of view on the world’; it is ‘one personality orienting itself among other personalities within a limited field’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. xxxvi). Alkali as the author does not completely identify with a particular character’s consciousness but rather places the characters’ consciousness in a dialogic relationship with one another. The Woods becomes a symbolic liminal space from which the multiple voices are orchestrated; a physical space between the village and the city, where the characters’ dreams or aspirations are placed between tradition and modernity, reality and fantasy. During their dialogic interactions in this space, they discuss the agency of the female in the city and the village, private and public as well as the modern and traditional spaces.

Northern Nigerian Female Education and Socio-Economic Independence

The space in the Woods becomes a vantage point between the city as signifying modernity and the village as signifying tradition where the dreams and consciousness of the characters engage one another. While Awa dreams for a better life in the village space but remains in the traditional village setting, and Faku dreams for a better life in the city and remains there, Li oscillates between the city and the village in search of an inclusive, happy, and fulfilled life. Eventually, education becomes the denouement to their predicaments within these spaces.

An important private space where the lives of the females are affected within the city and the village, and which Alkali and the characters try to ‘come out of the woods’ from, is marriage. While in the Woods, Li asks Garba to tell them ‘about the city’ (p. 44) where he comes from. Garba begins by telling them that in the city ‘free’ women are readily available and that ‘getting married is not expensive […] A girl could live with you of her own will’ and ‘sometimes you do not have to pay anything’ (p. 44-45). The city, by implication, both empowers and objectifies the woman. Awa sees this as ‘not marriage’ but ‘prostitution’ (p. 45). In the traditional village space, however, women are the opposite of cheap: they are expensive and essential commodities but disempowered. A man has to spend money before and during traditional courtship and has to take care of the wife after marriage.

Mary E. Modupe Kolawole observes that ‘marrying strangers instead of men chosen by their parents is at the root of their [Li, Awa, and Faku] problems’ (Kolawole, 1997, p. 84). Kolowale is suggesting that Alkali shows it is the wrong choices these characters make rather than the tradition or the modernity that makes their dreams stillborn. She suggests that the point Alkali makes is that it is their fault for going against the grains of the traditional requirements of courtship which become their nemesis. Kolawole might be right but her observation focuses on a single perspective, which does not look at other angles through which the dream of the female characters for socio-cultural emancipation is not realised. They succeed by getting the right education, not the right man.

A point in marriage raised by Garba in the Woods is polygamy. He says that in the city ‘one can acquire many wives’ and he has a friend who ‘keeps four different women in four different areas of the city’ and ‘none of them knows the other exists’ (p. 45). This assertion is further put into dialogue among the characters, including the male characters around him. How polygamy affects the socio-economic independence of the female in the village and the city is what the characters put into dialogue. 

According to Mary E. Kolawole, ‘urbanisation and encroaching modern values are the real causes of their [Faku’s, Li’s] tragic or semi-tragic lives’ (Kolawole, 1997, p. 84). The city, that Faku hopes would take her out of the social and economic challenges of the village, turns out to be no different. Polygamy is, however, not identified as an exclusively urban phenomenon as Kolawole asserts; traditional northeast village society is a polygamous culture bound by Islamic religion that allows a man to marry up to four wives. To Faku, there is nothing wrong with polygamy and so she accepts Garba as a husband although she knows very well he has a wife. The narrator reveals:

If the man could afford to feed dozens of other wives, who was she to object? For her, polygamy was not the point at all. The point was that once she married, living along with her mother was over. They would no longer have to work their fingers sore to feed themselves or mend the leaking roof, because someone else would be responsible (p. 46).

Not only does he fail to feed even a quarter of a dozen wives, he eventually fails to take care of Faku so that she eventually opts out of the marriage in the city. Like Li, Faku is initially weakened by city life. She first drifts into prostitution. This still suggests she is economically dependent on the male clients for her survival as a sex worker. After leaving Garba’s house and drifting for three years ‘without a proper sense of direction’, Faku eventually meets ‘a kind woman’ who assists her to join the profession of ‘social welfare’ work (p. 102). When she finally acquires further education and becomes a social worker, she achieves the kind of economic independence that is not tied to the male, and it is here that Alkali’s voice now changes, and becomes supportive of female socio-economic independence. She, however, takes a liminal position between supporting women’s agency in the city and denying it as well as supporting female freedom of choice in life and the provisions of Islamic codes. She also stands at the liminal threshold between Faku’s free choice to be a sex worker and discouraging the choice as it is against Islamic religious and cultural injunctions. The predicament of the female within the culture, as Alkali demonstrates, is only overcome when she acquires formal western education. In such a culture, it’s only when females adopt Li’s and Faku’s approaches that they can gain socio-economic and socio-cultural freedom.

A related element to both marriage and polygamy in Garba’s speech is the idea of ‘slaving’. Garba says in the city ‘one can acquire many wives without slaving for them’ and that the four secret wives of his friend ‘all slave for him’ (p. 45). By implication, Garba suggests that it is the women who ‘slave’ for the men in the city, unlike in the traditional village setting where religion and culture require that the female should stay at home under purdah and the man goes out to work for her sustenance. In the city, the man does not have to worry about providing the woman with her essential needs because the women, especially the modern educated and working class, are economically independent there.

Domesticity is a cultural material that suppresses the northern Nigerian woman, especially in the traditional village space. After a few weeks at home, Li began to find the atmosphere in her father's compound suffocating. A girl is required to stay at home to undertake domestic chores that include cooking, sweeping, washing, and collecting firewood while the male goes out to get food for the family. While Alkali is first critical of the city, with Li declaring it ‘destroys dreams’ (p. 94), she eventually shows it also ‘builds’ dreams as it offers Li a formal education to fight for her cultural space as a female in both the village and the city spaces. In the village space, however, women who venture into the economic spaces are the less privileged, pushed into desperation to survive. This may also mean that though they engage in trading in the marketplace, they cannot venture into a bigger enterprise but only undertake feminised jobs, such as frying bean cake, and be patronised by the lowly in the society. By implication, women cannot achieve higher socio-economic independence in the same manner as men do in the village; they remain at the margin by the gendered, feminized, and lowly enterprise they venture into. By acquiring education through joining a teacher training college for further education in the city, however, Li rises above this pettiness (p. 85). After graduation, she becomes a ‘successful teacher and owner of a huge modern and enviable building’ (p. 101). ‘’Enviable’ suggests a semantic authorial tone of affirmation on the decision Li has taken. The narrator reveals Li becomes self-reliant and eventually becomes the matriarch of her family. The travesty is more pronounced when Awa asks Li to marry Alhaji Bature after she returns to the village and Li retorts, ‘I will marry no one. What do I need a man for?’ (p. 88). She tells Awa that her coming to the village does not mean she is a burden to any man as she used to be. She tells Awa that even Habu has begged her to return to him because they ‘need each other to survive’ but she ‘told him that she and her daughter ‘did not like or need him’ because ‘for years we had survived without him, we could do so again and again’ (p. 92) and that ‘there is more to being a father than lying between a woman’s thighs’ (p. 91). This turning point in Li’s life resonates with Grace Oche Okereke’s third ‘mature stage of self-assertion and reconciliation’ (Okereke, 1996, p. 98), which is brought about by the new social status Li acquires in the city through education. The social change brought by modernity, therefore, makes Li see the relationship between man and woman from a different perspective - from how it used to be before she acquired education. She becomes strengthened by her disillusionment in marriage and eventually becomes independent of any man.

Despite the freedom formal education gives Li, she eventually chooses to return to Habu, confirming Li’s and Alkali’s modern woman who is a ‘divided individual, the pseudo-self, no longer at ease with tradition and not ready to acquiesce’ (Kolawole, 1997, p. 84). Also, while Alkali is first critical of the city, with Li declaring that the city ‘destroys dreams’ (p. 94) she eventually shows that the city also “builds” dreams as it offers her a formal education to fight for her cultural space as a female.

As Malak, (2004, p. 94) suggests, all the heroines of the Stillborn show ‘deep attachment to the spontaneity and vitality of village life in contrast to the shabbiness, pretentiousness, and brutality of the city life’. They suffer the tension of embracing change in the modern space due to the traditional values imposed on them by the culture. However, Alkali argues that the city offers both economic hardship and respite for Li and Faku. Although it is in the city that their lives become more miserable, at the same time the city offers them socio-economic independence through education to rise above the level of pettiness in the traditional village space.

Female Education and Patriarchy

As Garba reveals in the Woods in The Stillborn, he abhors and is apprehensive of female formal education because it is a threat to the patriarchal authority; it offers women an empowering tool to resist cultural exclusion. So, education becomes a threat to the patriarchy, according to his assertion because it makes males such as Habu develop a ‘soft attitude’ towards women, which ‘has ruined his manhood’. He concludes that ‘it is a good thing my old woman never sent me to school’ (p. 45). 

Patriarchal hierarchy and the relevance of education are other issues Alkali addresses through the multiple vignettes on the characters and their experiences. According to Margaret Kassam, in the northern Nigerian cultural milieu, there are ‘restrictive gender codes permeating society’ (Kassam, 1996, p. 120) which restrict the female child from privileges that are not denied to the male child. One such restrictive gender code is the significance society places on the male child, which runs through most Nigerian feminist fiction. In The Stillborn, Alkali presents this preference and privileges through the double-voiced discourse, many-voicedness and multilevel framework of the novel.

The multileveled framework of subplots woven around the story of Sule and Dan Fiama illustrates and subverts the myth surrounding the male child’s superiority. Sule who is placed above his elder sister Awa because he is a male does not eventually become the pillar of the household. He leaves the village and the country and starts a life somewhere as a stranger. It is eventually Li, as a daughter, who assumes the role of the son in the family after the death of their father and the disappearance of Sule because of her education. Awa reminds her about this new position after the death of Baba: ‘The mourners are outside waiting for you. You are the man of the house now’ (p. 101). Ojinmah and Egya state it is this ‘manly role’ that Li assumes which takes her out from a ‘survivalist’ state to a state where she is independent of man (Ojinma & Sule, 2005, p. 43). She assumes the responsibility that culture bestows only to the male because she is educated.

Grace Oche Okereke’s first stage of ‘domestic revolt’ (Okereke, 1996, p. 98) starts with a subversion of Baba’s patriarchal authority. This revolt or subversion signifies Alkali’s revulsion and critical disapproval of the patriarchal culture. As a daughter, Li is tormented by a father who makes her life in the home ‘worse than prison’ (p. 3). Although Awa is the eldest in the family, Baba still beats her because she is a female but cannot punish Sule due to the superior position of the male in the culture. Baba as well has a soft spot for the male child, Sule. Unlike her brother Sule, Li is not only beaten by Baba when she defies his rule but is also restrained from freedom of movement and associations. The intention of Alkali of representing male authority and the represented authority reveals that her feminist consciousness conforms to radical feminist ideals that, in Ellen Willis’ terms, ‘seek to reorder society in all and eliminate male supremacy in all contexts’ (Willis, 1984, p. 117).

The radical viewpoint on male authority eventually gives way to a liberal, womanist and progressive perspective through Li’s progress to the second and third stages of ‘marital subsumption and revolt’ and the ‘mature stage of self-assertion and reconciliation’, respectively (Okereke, 1996, p. 98). Despite assuming a role that put Li at par with the male due to her education, the reader sees the irony in male authority after the death of Baba and the disappearance of Sule from the family. Alkali sees the significance of the father figure in the community through the narrator who reveals: ‘It is incredible Li thought that when Baba was still active it seemed he brought nothing but unhappiness, yet when he became paralysed, the compound went berserk’ (p. 58). This irony is further revealed when Li finally decides to return to Habu despite his poor treatment of her.

The fluidity of Li’s character as she moves from a character image of opposing the male figure to another one supporting it backs Alkali’s womanist assertion in an interview with Chris Nwamuo: ‘A woman can never be anything else but a woman. Her role in life is as important as that of the man, but not the same’ (Nwamuo, 1988, p. 1256). It is this fluidity of identity that strengthens Li’s independent subjective voice as a polyphonic character. It saves her from being a surrogate for a dominant authorial voice of Alkali on a single feminist ideal, such as the radical stance she takes at the beginning, which may be found in a narrative construction that is not dialogic.

Conclusion

Alkali’s choice of polyphonic form for The Stillborn offers multiple perspectives revealed from within and liminal positions, and so far revealed the nexus between the Northern Nigerian woman Islamic consciousness and various strands of feminism – liberal, radical, Africana womanism. The choice also reveals a process of ‘dialogisation’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 263) between these multiple voices in the novel. Through the polyphonic dialogic narrative frame, Alkali is able to interrogate and negotiate issues such as the socio-economic independence of women and patriarchy as they affect the agency of the Northeast Nigerian woman.

  Thus, the paper has revealed Alkali’s ideological position that acquiring western education is the better way to liberate the female from socio-economic exclusion and cultural challenges of patriarchal hierarchy in the northern Nigerian region. Formal education remains the Deus ex machina to get the female ‘out of the woods’ in northeastern Nigeria, especially among the Kanuri, Bura, Tura-Wazila and other tribes in the present Borno and Adamawa states of northern Nigeria.

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