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\title{Literature, Modernity and Cultural Atavism in Aliyu Kamal's Somewhere Somehow}
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             \author[1]{Umar  Saje}

             \author[2]{Mal. Inuwa  Mahmud}

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\date{\small \em Received: 6 September 2021 Accepted: 1 October 2021 Published: 15 October 2021}

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\begin{abstract}
        


In Africa, especially in Nigeria, the issue of cultural clash and the dilemma involved in the process is one of the predominant themes largely treated by renowned writers such as Chinua Achebe (1958), Cyprian Ekwensi (1963), Elechi Amadi (1966), Wole Soyinka (1975) and Labo Yari (1978), to mention a few. Using postcolonial theory as a potent analytical tool, attempt is made in this paper to critically examine Aliyu Kamal?s latest novel â??" Somewhere Somehow (2019) and portray how he employs it to interrogate the tragic social and psychological effect of modernization/colonialism. The story elaborately discusses the issue of skin bleaching â??" a corollary of colonialism which has become very pervasive among the uneducated ladies with dark skin in northern Nigeria. Habi and Jiniya, the heroines, who blindly believe that boys, particularly in Kano â??" where the novel is set, pine after light-skinned girls even if they were to appear as witches, engage in bleaching that ultimately makes their skins like ?wankan tarwada? a Hausa terminology that suggests an undefined colour. The paper also depicts how marital peace eludes the bleachers? homes in addition to the tragedy that befalls on them all as a result of aping western culture. Jiniya dies due to skin cancer (leukaemia) and Habi suffers double tragedy: divorce and miscarriage.

\end{abstract}


\keywords{literature, culture, africa, womanhood, modernity.}

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\section[{Introduction}]{Introduction}\par
university teacher, novelist, essayist, social transformer and poet, Aliyu Kamal is now considered the foremost writer from northern Nigerian region. He was provoked into becoming a writer for two obvious reasons: first, to contest the claim that little is known about northern Nigerian writers in English. Secondly, to react to the misconception of many European philosophers and scholars, notably Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Hugh Trevor-Roper, who opined that Africa is a continent without history and a people without culture before European exploration and colonization of the continent as well as literary writers such as Joseph Conrad in Heart of  {\ref Darkness (1902)} and Carey in Mr Johnson  {\ref (1962)}, who equally propagated the notion that Africa does not have a culture of its own. Differently put, the colonialists regarded Africa as inferior to the white devoid of consideration. The black were the 'Other' and by implication, everyone who is not white becomes 'black'. It is precisely this developing Manichean dichotomy that compels Loomba (1998) to observe that the colonialists regarded Africans as inferior to the Whites. Anything black is associated with pre-history, savagery, cannibalism, unconsciousness, silence and darkness. Thus, Kamal's attempt at re-creating history, a history that underscores' the sophistication of Hausa, by extension Africa's civilization before the advent of the colonizers in his novels like  {\ref Hausaland (2001)} and King of the Boys (2015), provides a contrary view to the Whiteman's myth of bringing culture and light to the dark places of the earth like Africa. This points to the fact that literature, as Ojaide (2014:10) argues, "is a cultural production and any literary work should make the most meaning in the cultural tradition that inspired its creation."\par
Significantly, the novels -Hausaland and King of the Boys artistically portray African harmonious and communal life as well as various African cultural activities, particularly those of the Northern and Southern Nigerian regions. However, the advent of colonialism does not only lead to a change in culture but equally affects the age-long harmonious relationship between men and women in Africa as Ada (2020:225) expressly laments:\par
The colonialists introduced certain rules and regulations, which weakened the enjoyment of social, political and economic rights of women. This is not surprising because it aligns with the white man's patriarchal patterns of thought and behaviour in his homeland, which led to the agitation for liberation and equal rights by white women. Men were integrated into the new political, religious and educational institutions. The exclusion of women from these institutions led to their disempowerment and the destruction of traditional women's organizations. 
\section[{Defining culture, Ojaide further maintains that:}]{Defining culture, Ojaide further maintains that:}\par
Culture is a form of adornment to humanity. It is the culmination of a people's or group's way of life with their beliefs, lifestyle, and manner of dealing with their human condition and practical realities. There is thus one common humanity -we are born, grow old, and eventually die -but we have a diversity of cultures as each group of people has rites of passage that differ from place to place and people to people \hyperref[b10]{(11)}.\par
Contributing to the discourse, \hyperref[b2]{Achebe (1975)} in his seminal paper, The Novelist as a Teacher assertively states that: African people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth, and value, and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African people all but lost during the colonial period, and it is this they must now regain. The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self-respect. The writer's duty is to help them regain it by showing them, in human terms, what happened to them, what they lost (157).\par
The above reference succinctly reveals that, for Achebe, the writer is part of his society, and also a leader who should stir the course.  {\ref Soyinka (1988:20)} corroborates this view when he posits that African Art and artists must be critical guides to the society. He states that "The artist has always functioned in African society as the record of the mores and experiences of his society and as the voice of vision in his own time." This means that the artist is a chronicler; recording experiences and, at the same time, championing the aspirations of his society.\par
Pointedly, African countries like Nigeria that gain independence since the 1960's for about sixty years are still under the clutches of the super powers with new concepts and terminologies like post-colonialism, postindependence, neo-colonialism, the Common Wealth of nations and now globalization, modernization, digitalization etc and each directly or indirectly connected to the western power. According to Agofure (2016:237), "The effects of colonization are still prevalent in Nigeria today." The movie Jenifa, for instance, as this critic laments "reveals the prevalent desire to mimic western culture at all cost, this has manifested in alienation in various forms in the Nigerian social space." Indisputably, Hausa culture and values as evident in the novels of Kamal have undergone (and are still undergoing) a lot of changes as characters like Sadiq in Fire in My  {\ref Backyard (2004)}, Ashiru in Silence and a Smile (2005), Hajjo Gano in Hausa Girl (2010) and Asabe in Life Afresh (2012) very much prefer Western cultural values to the Hausa values. Likewise, the velocity of the abandonment of the dark skin in preference to the white by Habi and Jiniya in the novel under examination places Hausa/African culture on a weak pedestal facing serious challenge as they want to be more white than the White people. From this view point, the novel -Somewhere Somehow, in consonance with  {\ref Irele's (1973:10)} stance, scrutinises the "social and psychological conflicts created by the incursion of the White man and his culture into the hitherto selfcontained world of African society, and the disarray in the African consciousness that followed." Hence, it is the task of writers such as Kamal to actively play their role in the transformation of their societies as James (1986:8) writes, "The primary tasks of writers in the Third World have involved the retrieval of cultural dignity and an imaginative mediation between old and new to reconstruct and affirm cultural values." Thus, each writer, according to  {\ref Usman (2006:18)}, "is at liberty to state his vision of what he/she thinks an ideal society should look like or be". This explains that writers do not only expose the problems of the society but also propound solutions to them. In addition to that, Sylvester (2016) argued, inter-alia, about the thrust of literature that:\par
Literature plays a powerful role in the socio-cultural practices of which the writer is rooted. It is the writer's responsibility to be awake to the happenings around him and serve as a cultural ambassador. The conscionable writer will no doubt create awareness sensitizing and advocating cultural issues, the environment and other values being subsumed in the name of modernity. A good population of African writers have gone through some enculturation of western traditional modes and are in a position to creatively buy and sell mixed values that enhance integrity, pride and human development. This is where self-criticism matters to the writer to show how culture advances social, political and economic challenges of the country they inhabit \hyperref[b30]{(29)}\hyperref[b31]{(30)}.\par
In essence, literature is so much part of our everyday life, and the indispensable role it plays in moral and cultural crusade in the society cannot simply be jettisoned. Commenting on the utilitarian functions of literature and the contributions of literary artists in the society, Abdullahi (2012) in a paper titled, "Cultural and Religious Consternation in Northern Nigerian Literature: Reading Aliyu Kamal's Hausa Girl" buttresses that:\par
Literature mirrors the cultural norms, values, institutions and history, as well the entire socio-political and economic life of its society, including its system of belief. It is then the task of writers in every community to propagate and preserve the culture of their people in their writing. Coupled with that, they also write to criticize the misrepresentation of their culture by others and denounce the moral decadence that poses a threat to the society (249).\par
Obviously, Kamal's effort as a creative writer and social commentator singled him out as someone concerned with ethical and moral consciousness, cultural identity and attitudinal change in most of his works. According to Buba (2013:7) "Aliyu Kamal is a Kano-based writer whose literary works border on critical examinations and re-examinations of the values resultant effect they extend to life." And in the words of  {\ref Mahmud (2016:10)}, "Kamal is a writer whose novels aim at giving meaning to life by exposing the problems of the society and its progress or otherwise, with a view to drawing attention to measures to be taken for a better society."\par
So far, Kamal has published fourteen novels in addition to a collection of short stories -The Starlet and Other Short Stories and an anthology of poetry -The Freshman. His novel -Fire in My Backyard won the ANA/Chevron Prize in 2005. His fifteenth novel -The Upper Level and its Hausa version -Kwamacala is Press as the author stated in an interview. Professor Ibrahim Bello Kano, who wrote the forward of the novel and posted it in his twitter page expresses that, "Kamal's latest novel, The Upper Level (2020) promises to be more interesting than Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah (1987) in its literary handling of political satire." Since then, critics of Kamal eagerly wait for it to give their big critical round of applause.\par
It is against this background that this paper, deploying postcolonial theory as a reading technique, reads Somewhere Somehow and examines the issue of skin bleaching, one of the heartbreaking effects of colonialism on northern Nigerian ladies, who blindly aspire to shed their black skin and metamorphose to white. They consider black skin as evil and old fashioned which prevents them from getting rich suitors. Habi and Jiniya, the central young female characters, who bleach their skins and totally ignore the Hausa admonishing proverb that, "Borrowed cloths do not cover one's thigh" meet a catastrophic tragic end as expressly discussed in the paper. 
\section[{II. Postcolonial Theory as a Reading Technique}]{II. Postcolonial Theory as a Reading Technique}\par
As a theory, post-colonialism is chosen to depict that the colonized nations are still held in bondage of colonialism. Gomba (2020: 35) explains that:\par
Africa has contributed immensely to the postcolonial world and to the world. African literatures provide some of the most impressive sites of articulation for postcolonial studies. All indices of post-colonialism have been enunciated in African writings: slavery, displacement, colonialism, race, resistance, independence, dependent independence, postcolonial disillusionment and conflicts, hybridity and mimicry, migration, etc. Just name it.\par
In general, contemporary African Literature can be approached from the context of postcolonial studies since post-colonialism investigates the experience of societies, including Nigeria, which experienced conquest and domination by imperial powers, in this case Britain. This implies that the development of the country has been significantly affected by its history and experience as a colonized nation previously. Agofure (2016) explains that:\par
Post-colonial theory always intermingles the past with the present and how it is directed towards the active transformations of the present out of the clutches of the past. What needs to be kept in mind is that trying to grasp the contemporary and social impact of colonial history entails tracing the profound transformations and dissemination colonialism has undergone in a supposedly decolonised world (240).\par
Defining post-colonial theory,  {\ref Dobie (2006:207)} states that "It is a theory which investigates the class of cultures in which one culture deems itself to be superior one and imposes its own practices on the less powerful one." Postcolonial literature, therefore, reacts against colonialism in all its ramifications. It is concerned with the need to understand the complex ways in which people were brought up by and within the colonial system with a view to raising awareness for national consciousness. According to  {\ref Bressler (1994:199)}:\par
Post-colonialism is an approach to literary analysis that particularly concerns itself with Literature written in formally colonised countries. It usually excludes Literature that represents either British or American viewpoints and concentrates on writings from colonised or formally colonised countries in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, South America and other places that were once dominated.\par
The assumption of Post-colonial discourse is premised around a form of critique that is concerned with the social-cultural criticism of the processes of representation by which the West has framed and formed the identity, experience and history of oncecolonised non-Western societies and peoples. Bressler further argues that: Many English people believed that Great Britain was destined to rule the world. Accompanying the belief in the supposed destiny grew the assumption that Western Europeans, and in particular, the British people were biologically superior to any other 'race'... Such beliefs directly affected the ways in which the colonisers treated the colonised.\par
Likewise, Bertens (2001:324) defines postcolonialism as a theoretical and practical-political position in opposition to the oppressive conditions of the legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and the conditions of post-coloniality (the historical facts of decolonization and the realities of the new global context of economic and political domination). As this shows, post-colonialism is concerned with the diverse effects of colonialism on the colonised and their reaction to these diverse effects. In essence, this paper evaluates the pervasive influence of Western culture on northern Nigerian young girls, who aspire to shed out their black skin and replaces it, preferably with white skin. Somewhere Somehow (2019) is a novel that discusses the issue of skin bleaching and its attendant risks. Encouraged by her confidant Jiniya, Habi Habibu, the heroine of the novel is fooled into believing that boys nowadays pine after light-skinned girl. As a dark-skinned girl who comes from a very poor family, Habi stays without any boyfriend after the marriage of her beloved Umar with another girl. Despite his sincere love for Habi, Umar accepts his elder sister's choice of marrying her best friend's daughter. Having no money to buy the original lightening cream, Habi starts using lemon, the local one. And lucky her, Hamisu Abubakar, an English Lecturer falls for her and starts dating her. She then uses the money she receives from him as 'toshi' gift and secretly buys the original cream and lotion. After their marriage, Habi tries to maintain her secret passion and for that she asks Hamisu for money anyhow. Failure to get the money, she retaliates by refusing to cook meal for him or cooks very late, yet she utterly fails to achieve her desires. She eventually steals money from his pocket and also deserts his house to pay a secret visit to hospital to meet her best friend Jiniya, who suffers from cancer (Leukaemia) as a result of the top lightening creams she uses. On the D-Day, Hamisu comes back home only to find out that Habi deserts his house without seeking for his permission and leaves no food for him to eat. He phones her and finds out that she pays a visit to Jiniya and for that he divorces her. Ultimately, Jiniya dies. Later on, Hamisu allows Habi to come back to his house telling her that if she comes back before his wedding with Hadiyya (a dark-skinned lady), she remains the senior wife but if she delays her return until after the up-shot, then Hadiyya will be the senior wife.\par
IV. 
\section[{An Analysis of the Novel}]{An Analysis of the Novel}\par
This paper analytically examines the dilemma of young girls in contemporary northern Nigerian society, who are psychologically affected by 'colonial mentality' so much that they regard their black skin as old fashioned which prevents them from getting responsible suitors like Mrs. Bennet's daughters in Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In other words, the novel narrates the story of three ladies: Habi, Jiniya and Hadiyya. Each of them plays a major role in developing the two central themes of the story-conflict between the traditional and the modern and the theme of the place of women in the two worlds. The traditional and the modern are the worlds the Nigerian, and specifically, Hausa society in which the novel is set has to contend with. Every other sub-theme (abject poverty, divorce and parental irresponsibility, among others) gravitates around these two themes and the central character, Habi.\par
V. 
\section[{Habi and Jiniya: The Black-White Ladies}]{Habi and Jiniya: The Black-White Ladies}\par
As trusted confidants, Habi and Jiniya share each other's secret especially concerning boy-friends. Both of them are secondary school leavers, who cannot go to university as they come from a terribly poor family background. Their hopes totally lay in getting responsible husbands who will bail them out of the abject poverty that seems to permanently reside in their respective families. To achieve this, they resort to bleaching as a viable option because boys in Kano pine after light-skinned girls and they are dark-skinned. Initially, Habi has no idea of bleaching. After her graduation from secondary school, she rarely comes out as her father is conservative and disciplinarian typical of Baba, Li's father in Alkali's The Stillborn  {\ref (1984)}. Jiniya, being more sociable and wiser, sells the idea to her when Habi secretly visits her. Jiniya says to Habi "Boys are very choosy. They hanker after light-skinned girlsand most of us are not endowed with light skins" (p.17).\par
In appearance, Habi is more beautiful than Jiniya. Jiniya, too, recognizes this. In a flattering remark, she says to Habi:\par
Actually, the light skin doesn't suit all kinds of faces. The long face with a good nose and mouth matches a lightskinned face very well like that of the Fulani. That is why a girl who has a different kind of face that best suits the black skin easily gives herself away by bleaching. Someone with a pretty face like yours that people will identify as Fulani will easily attract boys, who will absolutely say as you are a naturally light-skinned young woman (p. \hyperref[b18]{18}).\par
Yet still, Habi is not convinced as she has no boy friend again since after the marriage of her beloved Umar with another girl. She thinks that the only way to attract another boy friend is by lightening her skin, the more. And going by Jiniya's deft choice of a Hausa axiom "You can enhance your beauty by having a bath" (p.63), Habi finds a duty to instantly begin bleaching. She secretly indulges in it without letting any of her family members (even her mother) know about it. She lies to her brother, Abdullahi to give her money to buy cosmetics but she uses the money and buys the local cream. When her mother asks her about what she hides in her hijab, Habi says to her "It is cosmetics me and Jiniya bought at the market" (p.60).\par
By chance, as contained in the blurb of the novel, "Hamisu Abubakar -an English lecturer falls for her". Habi is obviously very happy when she realizes it. She soliloquizes that: She was sure Hamisu had found her very attractive for her to catch him looking intently and unabashedly at her in admiration. The beauty treatment must have what Jiniya had said it would be. It had apparently given her immediate results (p.70). Thus, she wastes no time in using the toshi (gift of money) which Hamisu gives her whenever he visits her. She asks Jiniya to accompany her to Sabongari Market to buy the original cream. Chuks, the seller of creams and lotions, famously referred to as "Beauty Master" assures them that:\par
Lighter skins made women more attractive. Such women never felt inferior but told people confidently that they too, could look better with a good colour and thus be admired for displaying lighter skins with a polish that never failed to be noticed (p.103).\par
After Habi is married to Hamisu, she begins to ask for money to maintain her secret passion so much that it reaches a point where Hamisu as \hyperref[b19]{Jinjiri (2019)} observes "becomes completely broke as a result of her incessant demands for money." When she fails to get enough money, she chooses to rebel against him like Larai to Lawandi in The Blaming Soul  {\ref (2005)}. She refuses to cook for Hamisu and when he complains, she doesn't have any conscience-stricken feeling for what she does. This nauseating behaviour of hers makes him tender the first letter of divorce in order to bring her back to her senses and hopefully change for the better. Clearly, Habi spends a huge sum of money on bleaching purposely to prevent Hamisu from being attracted by any other girl, as Jinjiri further observes:\par
Habi thinks that she can lighten her skin to keep her lover always attracted to her and never think of taking a second wife. She is unaware of the negative and hazardous effects such habit would eventually have on her. She was totally oblivious of the negative financial and social effects the bad habit will have on her since that make her make excessive demands on her man (p.32).\par
Clearly, in terms of waywardness and naughtiness, Habi Habibu is a carbon copy of Hajjo Gano in Hausa Girl. They have a number of personality traits in common. Both of them are covetous, greedy and mischievous. The two are also avid readers of Hausa love stories and viewers of Hausa films, too. They are eager to act out the roles they watch in films. Habi, like Hajjo, copies everything she watches in films. Her covetousness of wanting to marry a rich man in their locality in order to have all the enjoyment of life is not unconnected to what she watches in Hausa movies. She fantasizes, as narrated to us, that "She had? the wish to cruise in Kano city with him in a car. More importantly, she wanted to cause a stir when they turned up together at a wedding party" (p.89). In fact, the attitude of Habi (s) towards dark skin compels critics like \hyperref[b34]{Nnam (2007)} to point out that: I have reached the African problem and have discovered that 'colonial mentality" is an attempt by Africans to continue to live and behave like we did during colonialism even several decades after independence. It makes us appear to be ashamed of our culture, customs and who we are. We pretend to be what we are not by trying to dress like foreigners, speak like foreigners... We become estranged in our motherland. We begin to see everything African as bad and inferior (viii).\par
That is to say, modernity, as Western trend, makes a person defy his norms and values to the extent of shedding out his black skin to white as he sees nothing good in anything non-western. Clearly, Habi and Jiniya's ardent desire for light skin is similar to Hansai, in Kamal's The Hair Today, Gone the Marrow (2014), who also wants to have her hair become silkier, fast-growing and more easily manageable as the Western type. And her instance on the application of do-it-yourself hair straightener kit indicates how young African women are so much drawn to modernity through copycatting Western ladies at the expense of their Africa tradition.\par
Jiniya, on the other hand, is not as covetous and greedy as Habi. She is also not mischievous, yet she is Habi's best friend just like Serah and Hussaina in Gimba's Witnesses to  {\ref Tears (1986)}. Almost every day Habi pays a secret visit to Jiniya probably because of their common interest in bleaching. They share each other's secrets, especially concerning boyfriends. Their main ambition is to marry husbands of their choice like Dija, Husna and Jummai in Silence and a Smile (2005). Unlike Dija and her friends who use education to achieve their ambitions, Jiniya and Habi choose creams and lotions as their powerful weapons. Arguably, Jiniya may not bleach her skin if were as beautiful as Habi. Thus, for Jiniya to save her marriage, she continues to bleach her skin even after she married Ladan. She doesn't want him to go for a second wife, as Habi severally cautions her that, "Men are watery-eyed." In one of Habi's incessant visits to her house, Jiniya, proudly says to her: So, as you can see, that is why I never neglect the beauty treatment ever since I started it. Ladan spends a great deal on food and because I read Cookery at school, I serve him wonders at every meal. That fools him into thinking it is the good living that has lightened my skin just as it helps him to fill out (p.176).\par
One other difference between the two friends is that, whereas Habi is an avid viewer of Hausa films, Jiniya, on the other hand, criticizes them because to her they are not reflecting Hausa culture, let alone teaching morality. She frankly condemns Habi's attitude of watching too many Hausa films. She challenges her:\par
What is there to watch in nonsense like that? It is all rubbish. Hausa courtship isn't done that way. I have never danced or sung with any of my boyfriends nor you or anybody else. It is Indian and we are Muslims. We just talk and crack jokes. That is enough. We shouldn't copy anybody: Arabs and much less the Hindu (p. \hyperref[b19]{19)}.\par
Finally, the two friends have a tragic end. On the one hand, Jiniya suffers from cancer (Leukaemia), which ultimately claims her life. On the other, Habi suffers double tragedy: divorce and a miscarriage. All this happens because they entirely depend on men for everything. Instead of depending on men, women like Gimba's Sacred Apples  {\ref (1994)}, Seytu in Alkali's The Descendants  {\ref (2005)} and Hadiyya Munir in Somewhere Somehow -the novel under x-ray do.\par
At this juncture, however, it is imperative to make it clear that Habi and Jiniya should not singlehandedly be blamed for bleaching their skins. The attitudes of young men towards dark-skinned girls coupled with patriarchal nature of the northern Nigerian society necessitate them to engage in doing it. What will be their fate if they do not bleach their skins? Will they remain unmarriageable in their locality? Or will they fold their arms and allow the light-skinned women like Janine Senchez, the supposed American lady, who recently married Sulaiman Isah Penshekara, a handsome young black man from Kano to take the lead? By implication, if the dark-skinned ladies in Kano are not very careful, more Janines will come from America and probably marry all the handsome young Hausa men. Bleaching, so to say, the best! Thus, one can boldly argue that Sulaiman like Hamisu metaphorically marries Janine's light skin not the real Janine. 
\section[{VI. Hadiyya Munir: The Dark-Skinned Lady}]{VI. Hadiyya Munir: The Dark-Skinned Lady}\par
Through the graphic portrayal of a dark-skinned girl, Hadiyya Munir, the author vehemently cautions bleachers like Habi and Jiniya against the disastrous effects of bleaching. The high education she acquires enables her really to know who she is and understand the value of black skin. She emphatically believes that only poorly educated black women like Jiniya and Habi bleach their skins. Sympathizing with Jiniya's premature death, Hadiyya pathetically says to Hamisu: ? Even though her skin appeared to lighten, it actually looked dead by taking on a corpse-like look. If she had known that the black melanin pigmentation in our skin protects it from sunrays, she wouldn't have cleaned it from her skin. Unmarried girls do it not to look totally white but, as they mistakenly believe, to enhance their beauty and become more marriageable. But Jiniya continued with it even after her marriage (p.254).\par
Culturally and religiously, Hadiyya is a virtuous and an upright lady. Her first appearance in the novel confirms this. "He saw a female colleague of his swathed in a hijab that only left her face and handseven that latter from the wrist to the finger tips-free for one to see" (p.205). This, no doubt, is one of the reasons that compelled Hamisu to have great admiration for her. In a monologue, he draws a diametrical analogy of the two women: With Habi, their talk usually gravitated towards family issues, running the gamut of marriage and naming ceremonies, sibling rivalry and domestic tensions sparked off by childish exuberance or spousal intransigence; but with Hadiyya, it ranged from student performance in English, the bad effects of information technology on students learning that language? (p.217) This and other reasons convinced Hamisu to wed her. In the last page of the novel, he justifies his intention to marry Hadiyya to Habi. He categorically says to her: I want to inform you that I have met a colleague of mine by name Hadiyya Munir to whom I have already presented a marriage proposal. She is dark while you are light-skinnedthat should serve as a hint for you to desist from bleaching your skin. I find them diverting and so esteem impeccable manners much more than fatuous prettification (p.266).\par
To this end, the significance of black skin to African women is obvious as Hadiyya points out. Therefore, girls like Habi and Jiniya, who come from familes that lack the means to sponsor their wards to university, can engage in petty businesses common to Hausa women which will enable them to independent economically in addition to getting marriage suitors. For instance, Ashiru's sister in Silence and a Smile sells dubulan (dumplings), Dijengala in Life Afresh sells soup ingredients, Larai in A Possible World sells Kafikaza (more tasty than a chicken) and Saude, Sadi's wife in No Sweat sells varieties of children snacks in the "order of groundnuts (boiled, salted and roasted), tiger-nuts (roasted, sugary and bare), sesame-seed (salted and sugary), peas (boiled and roasted), local fruits (goriba, aduwa, kanya, dinya, kurna and magarya), powdered milk and tsamigaye, prepared with baobab pulp and sweetened to taste  {\ref (No Sweat, 2013:42)}. This restores marital homes as they contribute in the family's budget with the money they gain in the business.\par
VII. 
\section[{Conclusion}]{Conclusion}\par
The central argument so far in this paper is to fully depict how 'colonial mentality' psychologically affects young girls in northern Nigeria, who at all cost prefer to shed out their black skin in favour of the white but tragically fail. Briefly, Somewhere Somehow is a clarion call to women who are easily deceived in these deleterious days. Lucidly, it preaches to ladies like Habi and Jiniya to curtail their inordinate ambition and engage in petty businesses common to Hausa women as earlier pointed out or to further their study to university level like Hadiyya Munir and Safia Ma'agi in Alkali's Invisible Borders (2016). This will assuredly enable them to find things for themselves apart from being independent economically. However, as critics, the questions that come to our minds as we conclude this paper include: Can a person who read English up to PhD. Level, teach it and predominantly write in it challenge colonialism? Does he use English for global recognition at the detriment of his own language? Is using English as a medium of communication not promoting its dominance on his indigenous language forever? Or has he taken Achebe's submission that "If a White man is not ashamed of colonizing us, we should not be ashamed of colonizing his language" into consideration? Clearly, the author's attempt to communicate on the effects of colonialism on northern Nigerian youth adopting English, the language of colonizers, is in itself colonization as we earlier argue in the conclusion of "A Portrait of Acculturation in Postcolonial Writings: An Analysis of Aliyu Kamal's Silence and a Smile." 		 		\backmatter  			  				\begin{bibitemlist}{1}
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\end{document}
