WHEN FATHER REMEMBERS SON… Category: saturday column Published on Saturday, 25 May 2013 05:00 Written by Bala Muhammad Hits: 722 Perhaps as you read this, today in Kano at Bayero University’s Mambayya House, Gwammaja, a discourse titled “Capt. Ismail Yadudu Foundation Viral Hepatitis Workshop” is taking place. This is the 5th in the series of workshops organised by the Capt. Ismail Yadudu Foundation, set up to remember a young man whose elegy we sang on this very page on Saturday March 21, 2008, more than five years ago. Readers may recall that dirge on the death of a young man, a soldier, a husband, a father and a son of our senior academic colleague and Muslim Brother Professor Auwalu Hamisu Yadudu of Bayero University’s Faculty of Law. Capt. Ismail Auwalu Yadudu, then 28, died on March 19, 2008 at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano from a liver ailment of cryptogenic cause. He was at that time undergoing his Junior Division Military Course at Command and Staff College, Jaji. Ismail, a brilliant boy, had enrolled at the NDA for the 48th Course but succeeded in being nominated to complete his training at the Royal Sandhurst Military Academy in the UK, where he passed out in 2001, earning the Academy’s Award for the Best Overseas Candidate in Academics. He was commissioned as an officer in the Nigerian Army and rose to the rank of Captain in the year 2004. Four years later, Ismail was no more. We had said then that “to lose a child in whatever circumstances is devastating enough, but to lose a first-born son in a family, (as the Yadudu’s have), is unfathomably tragic: the father lost a friend and confidante; the mother the apple of her eye; the brothers and sisters their mentor, their guide, for the Hausa say babban wa magajin uba (meaning: the first-born son is the acting father). One cannot imagine the depth of the grief, the loss, the sadness in the Yadudu family. We share this grief with them.” But the father, Professor Yadudu, did not let Ismail’s death diminish him. He became determined to bring succour to other sufferers of his late son’s ailment, among other good causes, as sadaqa jariya. He proceeded to set up a foundation which he named after the late son. The Foundation’s flyer says it is a registered non-profit organization established to assist in the provision of medical assistance to the needy and to make a significant contribution to the understanding, management and treatment of patients with liver ailments; to assist towards economic empowerment of women; to provide financial and other forms of assistance to Islamiyya schools; to assist with provision of potable water to needy communities; among others. In furtherance of one of these objectives, the Foundation has, in collaboration with the Department of Medicine, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano (AKTH), instituted the holding of an annual workshop, the theme of today being “The Liver in Health and Disease”, to be delivered by Dr. Mohammed Alkali Dambam, Consultant Gastroenterologist and Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi. The maiden lecture in 2009 was by Professor OA Malu of Benue State University Teaching Hospital on “Challenges of Managing Chronic Hepatitis in Nigeria; the 2nd by Professor YM Fakunle of University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital on “The Burden of Liver Disease in Nigeria and Challenges of Prevention.” The 3rd was by Professor JO Otegbayo, Consultant Physician at University College Hospital, Ibadan on “Practical Challenges to Managing Liver Diseases in Nigeria” while the 4th last year was delivered by Dr Wadzani Gashau, Consultant Physician and Gastroenterologist at the Department of Medicine of University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital on “Epidemiology, Causes and Prevention of Liver Diseases.” Allah is my witness, but what we all know about the father of Ismail, Professor Yadudu, is that he is a good man. Throughout history, and across all religions, questions have been asked on why calamity is so non-discriminatory; and why is it that sometimes good ones suffer. Of course, as Muslims, we know the answer in the concept of qadr, belief in which is a fundamental part of our iman. And we know that apparently good people are not spared in the here-and- now. In fact, other religions also do. In his phenomenal book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” written in 1978, Harold Kushner, a Conservative Jewish Rabbi, addressed one of the principal problems of theodicy, the conundrum of why, if the universe was created and is governed by a God who good and loving, there is nonetheless so much suffering and pain in it. The book was dedicated to the memory of Kushner’s young son, Aaron, who died at age 14 in 1977 of the incurable genetic disease progeria, or premature ageing. When the son died, members of Kushner’s flock would come up to him and say, “Rabbi, you are a good man. Why would God do that to you?” Kushner himself said he wrote the book for people “who have been hurt by life”, to help them find a faith that can aid in getting through their troubles, rather than making things worse. Amazon reviewed the book thus: “’Rarely does a book come along that tackles a perennially difficult human issue with such clarity and intelligence. Harold Kushner… facing his own child’s fatal illness… provides a uniquely practical and compassionate answer that has appealed to millions of readers across all religious creeds. Remarkable for its intensely relevant real-life examples and its fluid prose, this book cannot go unread by anyone who has ever been troubled by the question, ‘Why me?’” Kushner later followed up with another publication, “Book of Job” (Job, the Qur’anic Prophet Ayyub, upon whom be peace, was one of the most calamity- afflicted among the prophets of God) where he tried to answer the question: “Why does God test loyal followers?” Allah says in the Qur’an: “Every person (nafs) shall taste of death; and We try you with evil and good as a test, then unto Us you shall be returned.” It is reported that that once the great scholar Imam Malik Ibn Anas saw the Angel of Death in his sleep and the Imam asked him: “How much time is left for me to live?” The Angel pointed to his five fingers. Then the Imam asked him: “Does that mean five years, or five months, or five days?” Before the Imam had a chance to get an answer, he woke up. So the Imam went to someone who could interpret the dream. The man told him: “Imam Malik, when the Angel pointed to his five fingers, he didn’t mean five years or five months or five days. The Angel meant that your question ‘how much time left for me to live’ is among the five matters that only Allah (exalted be His Name) knows about’. The man recited the following verse from the Qur’an: “Verily, with Allah alone is the knowledge of the Hour. And He sends down the rain, and He knows what is in the wombs. And no soul knows what it will earn tomorrow, and no soul knows in what land it will die. Surely, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.” In her “Joy In Death”, famous poet Emily Dickinson, pens: If tolling bell I ask the cause. ‘A soul has gone to God,’ I’m answered in a lonesome tone; Is heaven then so sad? That bells should joyful ring to tell A soul had gone to heaven, Would seem to me the proper way A good news should be given. Indeed good news! Five years after his death, Ismail Yadudu has sadaqa jariya (interestingly from father to son, not the other way round) flowing into his eternal account. May our ends be blessed, and may Ismail rest in peace.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 20:05:45 +0000
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