It is frightening. For Nigerians, it is fast becoming the easy way out. It has become a way of escaping life’s grueling torture and misfortunes. Except you do not live in these parts, you must’ve noticed the alarming rate at which Nigerians, particularly young people, now take their own lives. Rarely a month goes by without a case or two of people who were discovered to have taken their own lives either by hanging themselves or by taking the popular pesticide called Sniper. Young business men many thought were doing pretty well have taken their own lives. Undergraduate students and of course graduates who could no longer endure the excruciating trauma of surviving in a society that appears to have totally abandoned them have also taken the easy way out. But why is this so? Why do we have so many cases of suicide these days? Is it just about the dwindling fortunes of our economy?
Just a few weeks ago, the founder of Lagos based eatery, Bukka Hut, Laolu Martins, reportedly committed suicide. He was said to have taken his own life because he lost a lot of money in a business deal that went that awry. The bad investment apparently had done such damaging effect on his finances, leaving him heavily indebted to banks and associates. He reckoned there was no way he could ever recover from the situation he had found himself and took the easy way out. There was also the case of the Lagos based auto dealer whose suicide video went viral. He was also neck deep in debts. For him, the situation had become humiliating, getting harassed and disgraced by friends and associates who he was heavily indebted to. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he waited one night for his family to leave home for a night vigil service in church and then hung himself, but not before making a video begging for the forgiveness of his wife and children , telling them he had to and take a final rest from all that he was passing through.
Many would still recall too the case of the telecommunications big girl in Lagos who took her own life and till this day, no one, none of her close friends can tell why she chose to commit suicide because as far as they knew, she was earning well and living well. But she never could find herself a man good enough to get married to. She was unlucky with men. Could that be the pain she bore to her grave?
But what about the much younger people who also took to suicide? What about students who were not confronted with the sort of financial predicament the older ones were enmeshed in, why did they choose suicide? What were the peculiar issues they were dealing with?
Sometime ago, the media were awash with the story of a 300-level student of Medicine and Surgery at the Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences of the Niger Delta University (NDU), Ammasoma in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, who committed suicide for failing his examination.
The student reportedly dived into Amassoma River and drowned before help came after realising that he was among the 22 students shortlisted to be withdrawn from the college for failing the Bachelor of Medicine exams beyond the level that they could be placed on academic probation for another academic year.
Reports had it that the deceased could not absorb the disappointment that came with the news despite attending the counseling session organised by the university for the affected students before being asked to withdraw from the institution. He was said to have dropped a hint about his suicidal intention through his WhatsApp status update before actualising it.
There was also the case of a 22-year-old final year student of the Department of English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). He committed suicide because she was said to have had a long battle with mental illness, a condition he was not initially identified with. It was said that the deceased had on two previous occasions drank kerosene and petrol in an attempt to kill himself but was rescued.
In a bid to make him void the thought of taking his own life, two of his lecturers were said to have taken interest in counseling him, including creating opportunities to have leisure with him whenever they noticed a slight change in his countenance. But their efforts were to no avail.
On that fateful day, he was said to have appreciated one of the lecturers for taking him out before penning his suicide note and pasting it on his Facebook page. “Forgive me. In case you are the one who found the body, I am really sorry. It had to be someone, you know. I have chosen Jo Nketaih’s poem as my suicide note: ‘They said you came looking for me. I didn’t drown; I was the water.’ Where do atheists go to when they die? lol. Amen,” he wrote.
Afterwards, he went to an uncompleted building on Sullivan Road, Nsukka, and drank two bottles of ‘Sniper’, a deadly insecticide, and slipped into coma. Some passersby, mainly students, discovered him and raised the alarm before he was rushed to the UNN Federal Medical Centre and later to University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Ituku Ozalla, Enugu, where he was confirmed dead by doctors on duty.
The story of a 17-year-old boy identified as Amos Ibrahim who committed suicide in Jos, Plateau State, by drinking Sniper also hit the headlines. According to reports, Ibrahim chose to toe the dangerous path after failing the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME). He was reportedly schooling at the University of Nations, a Christian university, but was withdrawn by his mother who feared he could end up being a pastor. He subsequently wrote the UTME in a bid to secure admission into a regular university in the country but failed. As a result, he suffered depression and drank Sniper leading to his death as efforts to save his life at the hospital failed.
There was also the case of a young lady based in Lagos State, who killed herself following protracted disagreements between her and her boyfriend identified as David. Reports had it that the 26-year-old hairdresser had endured an unhealthy relationship with her boyfriend since they met about two years ago and decided to commit suicide after David reportedly said he was no longer interested in the relationship.
Shortly before the incident, she was said to have sent a text message to her boyfriend, lamenting he had made life miserable for her and that she would soon kill herself. And she made good her threat. .
According to City People investigation, many factors are responsible for the preponderance of suicide cases in the country. A lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Lagos, Dr. Pius Adejoh identified three factors. He was speaking at a forum meant to address the spate of suicide among the youths. He said it was a reflection of the level of moral decadence in the country.
His words: “The issue of suicide by Nigerian youths is a deep cause for concern coming from the backdrop that in most cultures of this country, suicide is regarded as an abomination. Suicide is something that is never thought of. So, that it is becoming a trend raises cause for concern.
“I would say that what we see today in the form of suicide is indeed a reflection of the level of decadence morally that this nation has sunk into. The decay is at virtually every level beginning from the family. You know that the family provides the buffer for the individual. If you are traumatised from outside, you go home in the hope that there is a place for solace, comfort and succour. Today, it is very doubtful if our families are still playing that fundamental role. There is a pervasive abandonment of the members of the family by others. The parents clearly appear to have given up on their responsibilities towards their children. They think that responsibility is limited to making financial provision for the children. They think that responsibility is limited to putting them in the best schools. The psychological and emotional reinforcement that is derived from one-on-one interaction with them is lacking. And to the extent that these children don’t have the benefit of all these, they are isolated and individualised. That’s one reason I think suicide is on the increase among today’s youths,” he said.
Many have also said that the social media plays a very big influence in the way and manner the young generation have conducted themselves, especially as it relates to the issue of suicide. Dr. Pius Adejoh agrees totally as well. “The role of the foreign influence on our young people is not mediated by anybody. The government is not mediating the global culture that our people are exposed to. I am not sure of any institution that regulates what our children are exposed to. The bottom-line is that they internalise the values, practices and cultures they see in other climes. In Europe for instance, suicide used to be much more frequent than in Africa. Now, our people because they do not have the foundation to say ‘this is wrong, this is right’, as they copy the positives from Europe, they also copy the negatives. And the fact is that we copy more of the negatives than even the positives. So, we are not ruling out the influence of the global culture.
“Now, the social media, for instance, harps on virtual relationships. It has created even more distance from among members of the same family. You see husband and wife in the house not talking to each other because they are engrossed in the social media. You don’t know whatever their discussion would be. So, to a large extent, the unregulated social media in Nigerian environment is also contributing in creating isolation. You know there is cyber bullying. And there is also pressure that comes from seeing your contemporaries who are supposedly doing well on social media. They see their mates flaunting exotic cars on instagram or throwing money around. Without thinking to find out what these guys do for a living, they begin to get depressed, believing they are nothing but a failure. And once depression sets in, then suicide beckons. So, the social media much as it has positive values, when unregulated and uncontrolled at the family level, can also be a basis for disaffection, isolation and individualism all of which combine to predispose people to taking the kind of actions that are detrimental as we are seeing in the case of suicide.
“Again, the average young man in Nigeria today is exposed to an unprecedented level of pressure relative to what his contemporary in the past was exposed to. Those days, before you even finish from school, there was a job waiting. I’m not sure you needed to sit for JAMB time and again before you got admission. Competition is getting keener and harder; opportunities are diminishing by the day. And it is getting to this young people. So, it is a complexity of issues that come to play in the decision of young people to either decide to take their lives or do what is unacceptable socially.”
Another expert who was at the forum advised against thinking that the problem with the youths is that they have a sense of entitlement to their pursuits, saying it all boils down to faulty orientation and socialisation.”You call it entitlement mentality, but I think it’s faulty orientation and socialisation. The type of rigour you went through to get to where you are, you are not exposing your children to such today. As a primary school pupil, I went to the stream three or four times every morning before going to school. When I come back from school, I went to the farm and did other things. Today, are you exposing your children to those kinds of upbringing? And you say it is entitlement mentality? You created them in the first instance. If you took them through that route of socialisation to realise that life is not as simple as they thought, I’m not sure that they will take the path they are following.”
Indeed, he couldn’t be more accurate. Now, the question is, what are we doing as parents to raise them up to have that kind of thick skin to go through the mill to succeed? Today, we hear that parents are aiding children to compromise exams. In our time, our fathers didn’t do that for us. Our fathers made sure that we stood on our feet from day one and you knew that life was a battle you must win. Today, parents are padding their children all over and you expect them to be able to endure. We can’t blame the young ones alone, we blame the parents too. In sociology, we say that a child came clean when he was born. It is what society writes on the table of his heart that translates into his actions and personality. What are we writing? What provisions are we making? What orientations are we giving? If truth be told, parents should take responsibility for what is happening to these young people.
– WALE LAWAL
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