With the staggering statistic that every 33 minutes a life is lost in Nigeria to suicide, it has become urgent to open national conversations about suicide and mental health. The growing trend signals not just individual tragedies but a national emergency. As Professor Taiwo Lateef Sheikh rightly observed, “mental illness is part of suicide, but suicide is not mental illness. It is linked to multiple, intricate, and intersecting psycho-social conditions.”
With over 720,000 deaths reported yearly from suicides worldwide, Nigeria can no longer treat this issue as a moral failure or the mere consequence of drug abuse. Discussions at the recent Vanguard Mental Health Summit 3.0 revealed a deeply layered crisis rooted in poverty, depression, hopelessness, and a broken system that punishes pain instead of healing it.
To tackle the problem effectively, policy makers and mental health experts must broaden their understanding beyond substance abuse to include the full range of social and economic factors driving despair. As inflation rises, unemployment worsens, and purchasing power diminishes, despair has quietly become an epidemic.
Professor Olufemi Oluwatayo, a UK-based psychiatrist, emphasised that Nigeria’s harsh socio-economic realities have driven many to see suicide as an escape from unending frustration. Most victims are heartbreakingly young, between the ages of 15 and 29. Worse still, those who survive suicide attempts often face prosecution under Section 327 of the Criminal Code and Section 231 of the Penal Code.
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These are relics of colonial laws that criminalise what should be recognised as a desperate cry for help. Instead of compassion, survivors are met with punishment, reinforcing the stigma that drives many others into silence and death. Nigeria must revise its laws to prioritise empathy towards those in suicidal distress. Attempted suicide should never be treated as a crime. Those caught in the act should be taken to rehabilitation centres and treated.
The Suicide Prevention Bill, 2024, sponsored by Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong, offers a lifeline by seeking to decriminalise attempted suicide and providing care, rehabilitation and reintegration for survivors. The National Assembly should give it urgent passage.
Suicide prevention must be seen as a national priority. Governments should allocate dedicated funds for mental health, integrate mental health services into primary healthcare, and expand community-based support systems. Schools, religious institutions, and the media all have a role to play in breaking the culture of silence and stigma that surrounds mental illness. Harsh economic policies should be accompanied with effective social cushions.
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It is time to face the truth: suicide in Nigeria is not just a health issue; it is a reflection of our collective failure to provide hope, care, and justice. Every life lost to suicide is not a mere statistic. It is a call to make life worth living.
It is call for human-centred governance and a caring society.
