First Published in ‘A Physician’s Diary’, Daily Trust, 12th Feb, 2022.
By Fatima Damagum
Assalamu Alaykum Sheikh,
“Verily those who accuse chaste, believing women unaware (of evil), are cursed in this world and the Hereafter, and for them shall be a grievous chastisement” Sura An-Nur – Verse 23.
I open this letter with a verse I am sure you are conversant with. SuratuNur, you will agree me, is a beautiful poetic chapter in the Quran that deals with issues regarding relationships between human beings. In the first half of the surah, Allah SWT talks on the ruling for Zina, the status of someone who commits Zina, accusing someone of Zina, Li’an (the act of a husband accusing his wife of Zina), slander of Zina (al-Ifk), self-purification, dignity, honour, self-worth, protecting one’s gaze, entering someone’s home, the adab of being a guest and protecting one’s tongue among others.
Among the many lessons in this chapter, is the one which has given rise to much debate over the past few days: the issue of Zina and slander, hence the opening verse. In one of your sermons, you said and I quote (this is a rough English translation) “…many female health workers engage in fornication/adultery in the name of working in a hospital.” You linked female nurses to immorality, sexual harassment and adultery/fornication.
The first thought that came to my mind after listening to your lecture was ‘Allah ya isa’.
Ya Shaykh, please put yourself in our shoes. Being a female health worker from Northern Nigeria is hard enough, we do not need you to add salt to our already open wound. I am not a nurse, but as their colleague, I know exactly how it feels. Do you know how hard we had to study to get where we are? Do you know how many candles (literally and figuratively) that I have burnt studying at night? Do you know how many times I have cried myself to sleep wondering if this medicine is worth it? Do you know the risks we take when travel for courses and exams in Lagos and Ibadan- riding Okada and Molue? Do you know how many quarrels we have had with our spouses, children and relatives just so that we can achieve our goals as health care professionals? Do you know the sacrifices we have made? Do you know the number of our colleagues that have died from hospital acquired illnesses? Do you not know the negative perception that female professionals have in northern Nigeria?
Yet, instead of lending your voice to our plight and encouraging young girls, you damned us all in a single sermon. What we have spent several years building, you attempted to crush with your words.
Ya Shaykh. Let me tell you something. In my fourteen years of practice and my seven years as a medical student, I have never come across a doctor or nurse who instead of going for night shift or call, went for ‘runs’ instead. Why? Because we do not have time.
What is the bone of contention? Night shift abi?
I remember the first night I spent in the hospital as a house officer in O&G; I barely slept a wink. The night was spent running between labour room, post-natal ward, gynae emergency and gynae ward. The night was a blur of blood, sweat and liquor as the more experienced nurses and doctors guided me on how to sort out the patients. By the time I was done with the call, I wanted to die from exhaustion.
Later in my career, I observed the way the nurses on night shift made use of their time; in between serving medication and monitoring patients, they would put their heads on the table at the nurses’ station and nap. Some used the time to study as a lot of them were pursuing their degree or masters’. As for those midwives who work in the labour room, it is only God that can reward them. On a typical night, they may not catch a wink of sleep. They deliver babies, stitch up women, wipe shit and comfort women and their spouses. What time do they have to fornicate abeg?
Hypothetically, let us say they are people among them who do so; because, well, there are bad eggs amongst us; What statistical method did you use to make the assumption that ‘most’ of health workers are fornicating? What was your sample size? What sampling method did you use? Or is it just hearsay. Or over-generalization? And if it is hearsay- then Ya Shaykh- that is slander.
Ya Shaykh, my fury is not merely at the sermon, indeed, as female professionals, I daresay that we have developed thick skins. Rather, it is at the consequences of your words. Islamic clerics such as yourself, know the enormous audience you enjoy all over the world as well as the power you wield in Kano and Northern Nigeria. In this era of YouTube and tiktok, your lectures enjoy a global audience and so the consequences of your utterances are much more than you know.
Imagine that business man in Sabon gari market whose wife is a nurse and has to contend with his relatives who say ‘a woman who does not sleep in her house, is that one a wife?’. What happens when he hears your lecture? The end of her medical career. Imagine that girl, in a rural village in Zamfara, who just passed her WAEC and is trying to persuade her parents to let her study nursing. She is the first girl in the family to get as far as writing WAEC, but upon hearing your lecture, her parents take a unanimous decision to dash her dreams and instead marry her off. Another cycle of poverty that could have been broken, will unfortunately continue.
What have you done? Do you know how many women have fought to be able to have a career in healthcare? Do you know how many years you are trying to take us back?
Another consequence to think of is this- If we all decided to stop working at night, who will do it? What mid-wife will attend to your wife, daughter, sister when she comes to the labour room at 2am? What nurse will serve her 12am medication? What pharmacist will dispense the drugs at 3am? What scrub nurse will enter into surgery when your relative has an ectopic pregnancy and is bleeding at 10pm? What cashier will you pay to? What doctor will do the surgery?
Ya Shaykh, why do you preach that more females should go into the medical field and yet turn around to slander us? How do you want our children to respect us? How do you want our husbands to cherish us? How do you want our family and friends to see us? How are we expected to inspire others when we are reduced to mere prostitutes?
It is more disheartening that all this is happening against a background of poor health and educational indices in Northern Nigeria. While various state governments are trying hard to encourage our youth with scholarships to study medically related courses so that we can break the cycle of unemployment and poverty, some people are using immorality in hospitals (based on hearsay) as a reference point for their lecture.
Two steps forward, a million steps backwards.
Ya Shaykh, I am aware that you have retracted your statement after pressure from National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), but it is not enough. In Islam, as you rightly know, slander is not something to be taken lightly. We have not come this far to be taken back by malicious hearsay. This is the time for health workers to rise in unison to address these issues, if not, next time, another cleric will make another baseless allegation of which he has poor knowledge. Show us a scientifically based survey and proof of our immorality and we will keep quiet.
In the absence of proof, I live you with the Prophet’s hadith: “Whoever believes in God and the Last Day should speak a good word or remain silent”
Yours Sincerely,
NMA Kano
MWAN Kano.
