Rarara’s Honorary Doctorate Degree: Surely, our Colonizers Toyed with our Intellect -By Abdullahi Abubakar Ladan

Flying all over the internet yesterday and today is the hot debate on whether or not Dauda Kahutu Rarara, the famous political singer from Katsina State, truly deserves to be awarded an honorary doctorate degree. The same honor, mind you, that many other musicians with far less influence and popularity than him have quietly received without raising half as much noise.

Today, in our colonized mindset, if you don’t have Western education, then you are considered an illiterate. We have forgotten that when these people (colonialists) came, they met us reading, writing, and with a strong system of democracy under the leadership of our traditional rulers. But they dismantled our rulers, branded our scholars and forefathers with the word “illiterate,” and only considered those who went through their schooling as “educated.”

Dr. Zainab Ahmad Tanko, the first woman to become Secretary to the State Government of Nasarawa State, did her PhD research on the famous Hausa musician, Dr. Mamman Shata. Similarly, recently, a university carried out research on the songs of Rarara, and people insulted the university for it.

Politics aside, in the field of music, Rarara has reached a level worthy of an honorary doctorate for reasons such as these:

1. Over 1.2 million people follow Rarara on his Facebook page. If you combine the followers of all the North-West Governors’ personal pages (Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara), their total followers do not even reach one million. From the beginning of this month, Rarara received over 170,000 likes on just 14 of his posts.

2. Hon. Hamza Suleiman Faskari only became popular across the North because of the songs Rarara composed for him but before then, even in Katsina State, not everyone knew him. Similarly, in 2015, the song Rarara composed for the late President Buhari drew the attention of voters and unsettled the opposition. The same thing happened in 2019 and 2023.

3. Recently, he composed a song for one Bala Wunti from Bauchi State, and in a short time, the song spread not only across Bauchi but throughout the North and Nigeria at large.

4. The award of an honorary doctorate depends on the university’s standards, but each considers a person’s impact on society, and the influence of their knowledge or skills on people.

I am not writing to defend Rarara or justify the award. I write to defend the dignity of our culture and the knowledge system that the colonialists disrupted when they came. A Western certificate is indeed very important, especially as evidence that someone has studied, but this certificate Rarara received is a recognition of skill and influence, it stands as proof of mastery, not of reading what another person wrote.

Shouldn’t we, as Northerners, begin to reflect and stop viewing those who didn’t go through Western schooling as illiterates?