Taking the Plunge: Thoughts on Dr. Orji - Koye-Ladele Mofehintoluwa

"If I had no sense of humor. I would long ago have committed suicide"- Mahatma Gandi

The recent cases of suicide being reported call our attention to the matter of mental health that is largely ignored in Nigeria. It is always considered as the work of the "enemy" when someone ends their own life. Like every other thing, suicide in Nigeria has its spiritual twist and a person that takes his own life cannot be buried if some ritualists do not come around to extort the relatives with the superstition that the burial cannot hold without certain ritual processes.

A lot of Nigerians are actually battling challenges and they cannot talk about it or even open up. My first memory of a suicide was on my way back from Primary school, there was noise of wailing all over the street and from the babble, I could bring out the sense that someone had killed himself.

Despite being a child, I understood the concept of a person taking their own life. My concern then was if he was going to heaven or hell. It would take time before I reached the understanding that close to the final moments of a suicidal person, they no longer care about the afterlife. They crave death. They long for a stop to everything life has to offer. They mostly imagine a dark endless loop after the last moment.

Dr. Orji reportedly came out of his own car to leap into the lagoon. The reason for this has not yet been reported but he seemed like someone who was economically well-to-do.

Sometimes, life is this horror movie playing slowly. You expect it to end, but it doesn't. You then have the temptation to switch it off when the hope of the story changing for good does not materialise or seem like it would materialise.

Life is hard. It gets hard unnecessarily sometimes. It is hard especially when you're in a society that treats everything like a competition. A society that treats every one more like an item than as an individual.

Among the student community, I have spoken with people who carry burdens that are beyond their years. But they will never tell anyone. I have spoken for hours particularly with those from dysfunctional homes and they all have a story to tell. A sad story.

A large number of comrades and activists choose the path because they have been raped by life. They want to fight back. They seek hope in the violent peace of a revolution. These ones have seen enough to harden their hearts and they do not want explanations. They only have questions they are sure the answers lie in a radical change. Most of these guys have conquered suicidal thoughts by channeling their aggression on their mental image of the oppressor.

The lecturers do not help this mental state. People miss tests for instance due to valid reasons and lecturers try to form being disciplinarians by not conducting another. Some courses are not understood by majority of those offering it. When these things pile up, they become a mental weight that drown the mind. The option of ending it all in a moment becomes enticing.

Suicide suddenly becomes a good deal. It becomes a great offer. The depressed person looks around and thinks what he needs to do is to pull the switch. To press the stop button. To draw the curtain down. He visualises his own death. The pain of suffocation and the struggle before life is snuffed out. The stomach pain from using an heavy drug dosage. The seconds in the air before crash impact. He considers all these but still considers it a better option to living.

If you can't make life easier for others, don't make it harder for them. You know, there's really nothing better than the ease we offer people when they come in contact with us.

The scene from the movie 3 idiots of the guy who committed suicide keeps replaying itself in my mind. Many people than you can possibly imagine have considered suicide at one point or the other. While doing that final mental check for a reason to live, they find one or two things that hold them back. It could be a child, the tears of a loved one, a friend or any other thing. But try to be that one person that would stop those that know you from dying. From taking their own life.

Koye-Ladele Mofehintoluwa Oluwadetan
Obafemi Awolowo University.