Kunle Gbenro nearly broke down in tears as he drew attention – in a nearly broken voice – to the nearly-endemic incidents of Nigerians jumping off the Third Mainland Bridge to their deaths in the Lagos Lagoon.
Watching Anderson Cooper of CNN International Television talk about his older brother who jumped to his death from a high-rise building, reminded one that the word, suicide, is formed from two words, ‘sui’ for self, and ‘cide’ meaning killing.
A video showed a middle-aged man ignoring entreaties, “Baba. Don’t jump (into the lagoon),’’ while some individuals had the nerves to record the morbid encounter. Despite the entreaties, he jumped, missing a concrete slab in the water by inches. A speedboat raced toward him. No one knows if they were able to rescue him. The video ended abruptly.
No Lagos State Government Agency, not even the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency set up for emergency and disaster management, and the Lagos State Water Authority that manages water transportation in the state, announced a rescue or sighted any corpse floating in the lagoon.
Not even the Federal Government, that is surreptitiously pushing the innocuous Water Bill that will appropriate all bodies of water and land within eight miles of their banks, has acknowledged that disaster.
A cynic said the Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, would have raised hell if a cow had been the victim of the suicidal act even though the incident occurred in faraway Lagos State.
The Federal Government ministry with the longish title of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, neither acknowledged the unfortunate event nor did anything about it.
In the morbid lingo of workmen, whose colleagues fell off the scaffolding at a construction site, “It’s just another spanner or other tool that dropped off!” In other words, such a death is just all in a day’s job.
A frustrated young man was saved from plunging down from a flyover into the stream of cars driving below. While he was distracted by some people throwing stones at him and daring him to jump to his death, others sneaked behind him and dragged him off the ledge of the flyover.
When you hear of other reports – of a young doctor and a housewife, both obviously depressed – attempting to jump into the Lagos Lagoon, you wonder what it is with the Third Mainland Bridge and suicidal acts.
Of course, there are reports of those who took rat poison or chose the old route of exiting this world by simply hanging themselves by the neck. A young lady reportedly left a suicide note for her mother, whom she claimed to love.
Kunle’s argument that a high rate of suicide occurs in economically depressed economies, as currently obtains in Nigeria, is confirmed by a 2007 World Health Organisation study, titled, “Impact of Economic Crisis on Mental Health.”
The study revealed that “the economic crisis is expected to produce secondary mental health effects that may increase suicide and alcohol death rates… The current economic crisis is increasing poverty (even) in the European region. The economic crisis will hit people with low income – and those made poor through the loss of income and housing – hardest…
“The current economic crisis is probably increasing the social exclusion of vulnerable groups, low-income people and people living near the poverty line… Such vulnerable groups include children, young people, single parent families, unemployed people, ethnic minorities, migrants and older people.”
Going back in time, Kimberly Amadeo recalls that America’s Great Depression of 1929, an economic disaster of extreme dimensions, shook America’s confidence in its capitalism, caused bank failures, 25 per cent unemployment, plunged housing and stock market prices, and caused social dislocation and psychological depression.
Experts, who say that the ratio of mental health workers to the Nigerian population is way below the acceptable mark, with only 10 per cent or 20 million Nigerians having access to mental healthcare, posit that men are more likely to commit suicide.
That, you will agree, goes without saying. The economic and social pressures on men, especially in patrilineal societies like Nigeria, are daunting. And the lack of social safety nets leaves no room for escape or manoeuvre.
The Nigerian governments, which routinely fail to deliver on the social contract with the people, compound the situation as they notoriously neglect to invest in training mental health personnel and providing mental health facilities.
It may sound strange that depression is sometimes attributed to war and conflict. But it should be easy to see the nexus between the phenomena of war and conflict and mental health disorder. The economic and social dislocation and a sense of lack of an escape route can cause a great deal of depression.
Think of what the citizens of Rwanda, on both the Tutsi and Hutu divides, went through when the massacre of genocidal dimension engulfed the nation. Also, think of the heartbreaks of Nigerian citizens at the Internally Displaced Persons’ camp as a result of dislocation caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East region.
Nigeria’s loose cannon First Lady, Aisha Buhari, recently revealed that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), veteran of the Nigerian Civil War, who lost out of Nigeria’s power game, was in detention for more than 40 months and lost three presidential bids, once suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Depression is the elevation or lowering of a person’s mood. It could be clinical, characterised by loss of interest in life; persistent, a mild depression or mood; or a bipolar disorder, which is accompanied by mood swings.
The World Health Organisation claims that data suggest that an “active labour market, aimed at helping people retain jobs and quickly regain employment, along with family support measures, restriction in alcohol availability, debt relief programmes and access to mental health services, can be effective in preventing or mitigating the adverse effects of recession on mental health.”
Those who run Nigeria that the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra separatist group, Nnamdi Kanu, insists is a zoo, don’t even know how to run a zoo well. Those who run the zoo facility at the University of Ibadan are better skilled at keeping wild animals calm.
If you visit the place during feeding time, you see the zoo keepers promptly and professionally serving the meals to the zoo inmates. Every step has been planned ahead and executed with the precision of a Swiss watch, so that every animal gets its due.
Nigeria’s policymakers don’t seem to understand the country, citizens and problems that plague the nation. The serial omissions of the sundry governments of Nigeria are responsible for the inescapable bind that Nigerians find themselves in.
The chaos that policymakers have created by their inappropriate policies is the major cause of economic depression, which leads to the psychological depression of Nigerians. Kunle ought to be asking them to work at achieving a better Nigeria.
The mostly irresponsible policymakers of the country don’t even seem to appreciate the nexus between their ruinous policies and the psychological depression that many Nigerians have lapsed into.
It took former Minister of Education Oby Ezekwesili to point out the obvious reality that corruption (and inappropriate policies) of yesteryear led to the lack and poverty that Nigerians experience today.
Apart from the help lines established for those with suicidal tendencies, Nigerian governments must run a just society with economic prosperity.
