IF a worthy event that is seven years old has been inadequately reported, it is the free health mission of a Lagos State legislator, Hon Abdul-rahaman Bisi Yussuf.
This year’s edition got wound up on Monday, the eve of Nigeria’s 59th independence anniversary celebration; and how lucky I was to have been privileged to experience it. Thanks to my friend, Mukaila Bakare who hinted me of the goings-on at the free health mission and nudged me on to witness the closing day, somewhere in Ipaja town in Alimosho area of Lagos State.
On that last day, I saw more than 200 people, men and women including children who had registered for sundry surgeries. Kelloid and hernia patients operated upon in a makeshift building in the expansive Fela field at Ipaja town, free of charge, courtesy of Bisi Yussuf, with no fatality record.
I doubt if anything near the magnitude of what I saw has ever been undertaken by any other individual in public office at any level; and to imagine the enormous resources put in by this easy-going lawmaker in the last seven years is to be amazed by the humanitarian spirit embedded in Bisi Yussuf.
In a clime where some of his other colleagues in the polity indulge in mind-boggling ostentatious lifestyles and other frivolities, the three-term legislator from Alimosho Constituency 1, has set aside his birthday month, year in, year out, for seven consecutive years now, to offer medical succour to the health-challenged in his constituency. Removal of kelloids and hernia alone cost hundreds of thousands of naira, and to imagine the number of the beneficiaries in the last seven years is to appreciate the financial inputs of this single individual to solving the huge health problems besetting the state and its citizens.
These worthy efforts are best appreciated in well-ordered societies of the world, and our country should start emulating them. It brings to mind my experience in faraway Hampton in Virginia, USA some 10 years ago. I had gone from London to visit a Nigerian friend who had just overcome a huge health challenge, sponsored by his children. In appreciating my visit to that historic city, I was hosted to a dinner get-together by my friend’s family, at which I told my audience what contributions my friend had made to the Nigerian society through politics and religion that necessitated the need for me to visit him after overcoming the health scare.
Unknown to me, one of the invitees to the dinner, a top official of the Virginia Department of Health, was moved by my testimony that he called for the huge bill incurred on the patriot and within a short period from that eventful night, got the bill slashed by 80 percent and organising a refund to my friend’s family.
If such appreciation could come for a gesture I casually made reference to at a dinner, why can’t a bigger one by our own Bisi Yussuf attract a national award to be sponsored by the Lagos State government? It will be a well deserved honour, and it will help in galvanizing others to replicate what Bisi Yussuf is doing in his constituency, across the state and indeed the nation. The nation will be the healthier for it!