I am not Aisha Yesufu

The first time it occurred to me that such a mix-up was possible, was soon after Aisha Yesufu made her debut on the national scene, through her Bring Back Our Girls activism.

She attended the Annual Trust dialogue for that year and made some comments.

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The following day her photo was shown in the Daily Trust. An ardent reader of this column sent me a text from Kano after seeing it. His simple message was that finally he had seen what I looked like. I quickly replied that that wasn’t me. I told him I was not even at the event and my name always had Umar in the middle, while my Yusuf was always spelt ‘Yusuf’.

Somehow I put that mix-up behind me. But the release of a video in Hausa, last week, titled ‘Tona asirin Aisha Yesuf’ made some well-wishers reach out to me with the suggestion that I clear the air on my identity. According to the video, Aisha Yesufu had allegedly voiced public support for the LGBT cause, in a series of tweets she made earlier.

In one of them she reportedly said that from the age of 10, while growing up in Kano, she had seen same-sex marriages taking place there, so why the hullabaloo now that the Western World is asking us to do it?

Now whether Aisha Yesufu actually wrote those tweets or not is not clear, but my readers are really disturbed that I’m being mistaken for her. To them all and particularly a Justice of the Federation who wrote ‘I am relieved’ when assured that I wasn’t the subject of that video, I say I’m truly grateful for your concern and loyalty.

JazakumulLah khairan.

Meanwhile readers of this column know that I’ve been engaged in anti- LGBT advocacy for long, and there’s no way I can write in favour of that sinful and abominable lifestyle. May Almighty Allah protect us and our young ones from descending to such lengths in His disobedience. Amin.