BAUCHI: Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed that he once suffered 25 per cent hearing loss without being aware of it.
Obasanjo who revealed this on Sunday in Bauchi when he paid homage to the Emir of Bauchi, Alhaji Rilwanu Suleiman-Adamu, also said that even his Chief Security Officer at the time was suffering more percentage of hearing loss at the time without knowing it.
The elder statesman noted that many people in the world are deaf and probably won’t know until they go for medical checks on their hearing capacity before it would be revealed to them.
Narrating how he got to know about his hearing loss, the former President said he was abroad and couldn’t hear clearly when someone was talking to him, and insisted nothing was wrong with his ears
He added that the man persisted and sought his permission to clinically examine the ears.
According to him, the result of the clinical analysis showed he was 25 per cent deaf.
“After my result came out, I had to ask the man to also check on my Chief Security Officer then but shockingly enough, he was more deaf than I was,” he said.
The incident, he said, gave birth to the Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation, explaining that thousands of Nigerians had benefitted from its ear treatment and provision of hearing aids in partnership with Starkey Hearing Foundation.
Obasanjo said he would inaugurate the distribution of hearing aids targeting about 10,000 indigent people in the North-East, starting from Bauchi State where 2,000 people would benefit.
