Artiste Of The Year 2021: Maryam Bukar Hassan

For using her platforms as a social media influencer to champion the campaign to end violence against women and children, and for gaining global recognition for her video on domestic violence, Maryam Bukar Hassan is LEADERSHIP Artiste of the Year 2021

Maryam Bukar Hassan, an indigene of Borno State in the North-East of Nigeria, is an inspiring leader, a social media influencer, and a brand advocate. Born on December 25, 1996, in Kaduna State, the renowned poet and exponent of the spoken word, gender advocate, wellness enthusiast and the new voice of young emerging Africans has been advocating women rights and emancipation in the North.

An activist on violence against women and children, Maryam who is simply known as Alhanislam, has gained recognition for her video on domestic violence entitled “Violence Has No Religion”, which has attracted over 3.2 million views on YouTube.

The demography of her followers is spread across Nigeria, and through her platforms she has provided visibility for brands and promoted their essence to hundreds of thousands of her followers, particularly young women from northern Nigeria who are challenging the status quo and seeking better opportunities for Nigerian women. She has worked with multinationals, government and international NGOs, spoken and performed spoken-word poetry, using it as an intervention at various high-level events, including the Ake Arts and Book Festival, the Kaduna Book and Arts Festival 2017 x 2019, TEDx Argungu, NEXT Level USA, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) conferences, the African Governance Architecture Conference and the African Union 8th High Level Dialogue Conference 2019 which took place in Kampala, Uganda.

As an instructor on Sapphital Learning Platform, the former ambassador for the Islamic Ummah Relief international foundation and a resident artist of the “Five Cowries Initiative” runs courses on spoken-word poetry and poetry for children, and in 2017 she signed Caller Tune contracts with Airtel, 9 Mobile and MTN.

Alhanislam is currently an ambassador to the Gheii (global envoy international foundation), Hulul Albina, and the official AS ROMA academy in Nigeria — she is quite passionate about soccer and she also plays. She is the cofounder of Creative Kiddies Nigeria, a platform where kids are taught poetry, monologues, public speaking and Deen-at-heart speech, known as the production of content in Islam. Maryam established the Centre for the Teaching of Islam, the teaching of life, counselling, speech training, and the teaching house of literature.