You remember there was a time we used to joke that Nigerians loved life too much they can’t possibly kill themselves? No matter how hard life got, they just can’t do it.
And then when the Nigerian underwear bomber--Abdulmutalab, recruited by Al-Qaeda to blow up a plane over Detroit bungled that operation, we laughed and said: “You see, didn’t we tell you? The one time a Nigerian was in a position to kill himself, he ended up burning his own dick”.
And then Boko Haram came and cleared all our doubts. Men, women, strapped suicide vests on themselves and blew up in market places, in mosques, and other such public spaces.
We laughed at Tee-Billz remember. We said: person wey wan kill himself dey call people?
Tee-Billz called Banky to tell him he wanted to jump off a bridge. It didn’t mean he didn’t have it in him to jump. To even get there in the first place showed he was probably on the precipice. Let’s say there was however a niggling will to live. Without that friendly intervention who knows how all of that may have turned out?
When some people say they're depressed on their social media account, their friends or followers mostly laugh and say: it's because you're broke.
I’m not here to get into any specifics of mental distress or suicide. I am no expert. I don’t have any answers. My point is: we tend to bring our unique brand of flippancy to very sensitive issues, and then become very reactive when it blows up.
In the federal ministry of health budget, what percentage is allocated for mental health? My guess is, not up to 1%. We have only 250 qualified psychiatrists in a population of 170 million people. For us, mental health isn’t by any stretch an issue of importance. We sit and wait for the next outrage.
We have no answers for the vulnerable in our midst. We live too chaotically to notice anything. Bottom line is, we really don’t care. Not us. Not our government.
mitterand okorie
And then when the Nigerian underwear bomber--Abdulmutalab, recruited by Al-Qaeda to blow up a plane over Detroit bungled that operation, we laughed and said: “You see, didn’t we tell you? The one time a Nigerian was in a position to kill himself, he ended up burning his own dick”.
And then Boko Haram came and cleared all our doubts. Men, women, strapped suicide vests on themselves and blew up in market places, in mosques, and other such public spaces.
We laughed at Tee-Billz remember. We said: person wey wan kill himself dey call people?
Tee-Billz called Banky to tell him he wanted to jump off a bridge. It didn’t mean he didn’t have it in him to jump. To even get there in the first place showed he was probably on the precipice. Let’s say there was however a niggling will to live. Without that friendly intervention who knows how all of that may have turned out?
When some people say they're depressed on their social media account, their friends or followers mostly laugh and say: it's because you're broke.
I’m not here to get into any specifics of mental distress or suicide. I am no expert. I don’t have any answers. My point is: we tend to bring our unique brand of flippancy to very sensitive issues, and then become very reactive when it blows up.
In the federal ministry of health budget, what percentage is allocated for mental health? My guess is, not up to 1%. We have only 250 qualified psychiatrists in a population of 170 million people. For us, mental health isn’t by any stretch an issue of importance. We sit and wait for the next outrage.
We have no answers for the vulnerable in our midst. We live too chaotically to notice anything. Bottom line is, we really don’t care. Not us. Not our government.
mitterand okorie
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