Prolific Nigeria rap artiste, Jude Abaga fondly known as MI and his wife, Eniola Mafe, have opened up on their battle with a medical condition. According to the rapper they battle with the medical condition known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
ADHD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders of childhood. It is usually first diagnosed in childhood and often lasts into adulthood. Children with ADHD may have trouble paying attention, control impulsive behaviours (may act without thinking about what the result will be), or be overly active.
Speaking on the Aproko Doctor podcast, the couple said one way they have been able to fight ADHD is through “building the habit of communicating and understanding”.
While addressing how they deal with the condition, Mafe said she was diagnosed at 19 and the medical condition affected her when she was in school. She said, “It’s not this thing you can cut out. It’s actually who you are. It is actually how you think, accept the world, rejection, and everything.
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“It was for me realising that all the things that didn’t seem to make sense about me. It affected me in school. My inability to gather thoughts.”
While sharing his experience, the multiple award-winning rap artiste, MI said, “For me, my childhood was just that I loved music. It was tough for me to read in class, probably because I wasn’t paying attention. If I was really interested in something art, I will be excelling really well, while my school was suffering for it.
“By the time I went to college, I figured out that the ADHD thing was me and I still couldn’t connect the two dots together. I think the first time that I really got a sense of how much it can control a person was in our relationship, when Eni would explain.
MI continued, “And I googled it and it was almost like a weight off my shoulder. I can look back at some of those things differently now that it was always going to be part of my journey in life.
“To me, it’s both the thing that has given me so much, because it is where I go to like create and at the same time it’s the part of me that I want to understand the most.”