A Rejoinder To Adalat Yusuf’s: The Collapse of Daily Trust’s Health Interactive Column: Our Triumph

By

Muhammad Yadudu

gtg701t@mail.gatech.edu

I am not a health professional, doctor or a shrink, but I know an ill person when I see one. Just recently, I was watching an episode of Law and Order where one psychiatrist was trying all he possible could to prove that racism is an illness not habit. After reading Yusuf Adalat’s diatribe against the person of Dr Aminu Magashi, I thought if ever the psychiatrist mentioned above were to successfully prove his case, he must have used Mr. Adalat as a specimen.

Let me start by saying I do not know Dr Magashi and I cannot claim to be speaking on his behalf. But the manner in which Mr. Adalat portrayed Dr Magashi, M D, as “nothing but an opportunist, a Fulani Man that is supposed to be rearing cattle…” destroys whatever point he intends to convey.

Some might say I am unduly giving weight to my sentiments by writing to protect someone who is from my home state, shares the same religion as myself and whose ethnic heritage might be same as mine. But when a person like Adalat describes his compatriots with words like, ‘hate’, ‘cowards’, ‘rabid’, ‘naïve’, ’ass’, ‘stupid’, ‘useless’, then it is clear that responding to his tasteless article is a matter of honor not vengeance.

On more than five occasions, Mr. Adalat used the word ‘young’ doctor to describe Dr Magashi. While it is true Magashi finished Medical school not too long ago, are we then to say he has no credibility to speak on any matter? Is there an age barrier to being a health columnist?

Does Mr. Adalat have any concrete proof that Dr Magshi’s age has in any way led to his readers getting any wrong or mischievous information? Until we get convincing answers from Mr. Adalat on this and other questions it is safe to assume Dr Magashi’s youth is not an obstacle to his endeavor as a concerned health professional.

On reading Mr. Adalat’s piece further, it can be constructed that his misunderstanding with Dr Magashi is not at all due to any professional disagreements. “By stopping or killing the only public health voice from the North by a Northerner” Mr. Adalat wrote triumphantly,

“is something worth celebrating and I say kudos to Ishaq Moddibo. On the platter of gold, he did to us what we wished to happen for long”. Is there any need to explain what he meant? His excitement is that a Dr Magashi is shamed by daily trust not that the content of Dr Magashi’s column is found to be wrong or misleading. Whether daily trust has stopped the column or not is not clear to me but concerns me not.

As he tries to ‘unreasonably’ guide people to why he hates Dr Magashi, Mr. Adalat claimed, rather stupidly, that Dr Magashi is foolish because “he has turned down a project from us worth millions of Naira, simply as he naively and stupidly claimed that, he wanted to maintain an independent mind while writing.” Correct me if I am wrong, but since when did independence become a handicap. In this era of democracy, it is most reprehensible to think there are still people like Mr. Adalat roaming the streets, his Msc not withstanding. I mean with his disagreement with Dr Magashi, is it not conceivable that Mr. Adalat is trying to buy his over?

To say that Dr. Magashi’s NGO is a “Mush-Room’ is simply false and malicious. If anything, the Health interactive column in of itself is something that falls right into what Dr Magashi’s NGO claim as being their areas in focus.  I will direct Mr. Adalat to the YOSPIS, Dr Magashi’s NGO, webpage to see what it is Dr Magashi is doing.

(See: http://mysiteinc.com/yospis/Registration.html)

I think there are some many factual contradictions in Mr. Adalat’s piece that renders it useless. But since, like I said earlier, Mr. Adalat views his quest as one involving humiliating Dr Magashi, Muslims and Hausa/Fulani, I thought it best to respond on those terms.

The best way to end this rejoinder is by getting the words from the horse’s mouth, so to say.  Trying to give us a glimpse of what he thinks of Dr Magashi, he said, “To say I hate the young doctor   is an under statement…”. I dare say Mr. Adalat hates not only Dr Magashi but also Kano (which he referred to as the ‘riot’ state), the northern media, Hausa/Fulani and Muslims as well.

May Allah protect us from the evils that men do. Amen.

Muhammad  Yadudu

Atlanta, USA