13: CENSORSHIP, IDENTITY, CULTURAL NEGOTIATION AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION IN NORTHERN NIGERIA’S FILM INDUSTRY

This paper examines how Muslim identity is negotiated in Kannywood films under the regulatory authority of the Kano State Censorship Board. Drawing on Ibrahim Musa’s (2022) concept of “being Muslim” as a discursive strategy and Foucault’s 1991 concept of governmentality, the paper argues that Muslim identity is not fixed but is continuously co-produced through three negotiation strategies: gendered self-presentation, linguistic calibration, and narrative closure. Through a qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis of select studies on Kannywood (2013-2026), the analysis shows that actors and filmmakers anticipate censorship by performing piety, calibrating language between Hausa and English, and resolving narratives with Islamic moral closure. The findings demonstrate that censorship operates less as prohibition and more as cultural governance that shapes creative decisions at script, production, and editing stages. The study contributes to a mechanism-based model of identity negotiation under faith-based regulation, with implications for media policy and scholarship on religiously governed cultural industries.