Feature/OPED
Curbing the Menace of Suicide in Nigeria
By Okechukwu Keshi Ukegbu
Suicide is defined as the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. Studies have traced causes of suicide to mental disorders, including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and substance abuse—including alcoholism and the use of benzodiazepine, among others.
Unfortunately, analysts have begun to wonder recently if the evil spirit influencing suicide has finally decided to domicile in Nigeria. No minute passes without the news of suicide or attempted suicide. Every now and then, the stories that adorn the media landscape are “a student of the Lagos State Polytechnic, KingEzekiel Joseph Mayowa, drank sniper because his girlfriend of 9 years left him. Mayowa, who was a part-time student of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu Campus, department of hospitality management technology, died after using the now popular sniper, an insecticide, to end his life”. A Nigerian father of two identified as Seun Adedutan has taken his own life. The father of two who was described as a good Christian took two bottles of sniper to end his own life”.
The incidents cited above are tip of the iceberg. The list of suicide cases keep expanding. Nigerians were greeted on the morning of the 6th of April, 2019, with the news of the suicide case of a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, in the University of Ibadan. It was reported that the deceased ended his life after unfulfilled dreams of completing his PhD programme. The following week on 19th April 2019, a 100-level student of Kogi State University, Ayingba, also died by suicide after she was reportedly jilted by her boyfriend. She was said to have taken Sniper, a pesticide. Efforts to save her life were abortive. Several days later on 29th April, news broke that another undergraduate, a 100-level student of Chemical Engineering at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, ended his life after drinking two bottles of Sniper.
Shortly thereafter, an 18-year-old was found dead in her room in Aluu, one of the host communities of UNIPORT with bottles of insecticide and Sniper by her side. On the 4th May 2019, a 26-year-old hairdresser in Lagos ended her life after her boyfriend of two years ditched her. On May 13th, 2019 another student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, escaped death by the whiskers as attempts on suicide failed.
Another baffling case of suicide occurred on May 14th, 2019, involving one member of a Pentecostal Church in Lagos, who reportedly got depressed over his accommodation issues before taking his own life. On the 15th May 2019, a 17-year-old in Jos, was reported to have drank Sniper to end his life when he learned that he had failed the 2019 JAMB exam. A day after on May 16th, it was also reported that a third year Physics/Astronomy undergraduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was found dead in an uncompleted building in the educational institution. His lifeless body was found dangling on a rope suspended from a height.
As the list keeps expanding, experts have generated fear that the situation may not abate in the nearest future as there is the likelihood that more Nigerians are likely to succumb to suicide if urgent attention is not taken to address underlying factors that are fuelling the upsurge.
Among all the causes of suicide in Nigeria, depression is fingered as the key. World Health Organization (WHO) statistics showed that depression affected about 7 million people in 2015 (3.9 percent), while in 2016, suicide was the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 15 and 29.
The same health says that globally, 300 million people – 4.4 percent of the world population – are affected by depression, a leading cause of suicide. The WHO also notes that 5.4 percent of Africans have depression and contributes to 9 percent of global cases of depression. Good Health Weekly findings reveal that people that experience setbacks are more likely be depressed and contemplate suicide than others.
Experts have proffered the following suggestions as measures that can ameliorate the situation: readjusting the traditional family structure, deemphasizing the spirit of make it at all cost; ensuring job security; improving the number of psychiatrists; and passage of Mental Health Bill.
It will be recalled that a similar alarm was raised last year by Dr. Abubakar Bagudu, Consultant Psychiatric with the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Teaching Hospital (ATBTH), Bauchi. The alarm by Bagaudu said that eight out of every 10 patients brought to the mental clinic of the hospital are youths who abused drugs.
Bagudu further disclosed that drug abuse among young people had left them with depression and high level of suicide.
The consultant’s claim buttressed a recent World Health Organisation( WHO) report that half of all mental health cases started from ages 14.The report added that most cases went undetected.
Bagudu also noted that the ugly trend has compelled the Psychiatric department of the Teaching Hospital to create awareness among post primary school students.
It was also reported that Bauchi was among the states with a high rate of codeine abuse, translating into large turnout of patients with mental problems in the state.
Experts have attributed reasons of drug abuse to such factors as influence of peer group pressure to improve self-esteem, drug availability, accessibility, wrongful prescription and lack of drug education and the list is inexhaustible.
Researches have revealed that most youths who took to drugs was as a result of peer group influence. This is in a bid by our youths to join the league of young men that make things happen within their neighbourhood.
Like it is often postulated that “bad company corrupts good manners,” parents have enormous work in this direction by influencing to a greater extent the companies their wards keep. This approach will go a long way in checking drug addiction among our youths.
Another disheartening factor is the poor manner in which the circulation of drugs is regulated in the country. This trend has facilitated the proliferation of “prescription drugs” in the open market. The trend has degenerated to the level that drugs that require doctor’s prescription before dispensing to be sold in the open market.
In saner climes, certain drugs do not circulate widely except “Over The Counter” drugs. The situation has degenerated to the extent that the circulation and proliferation of drugs such as tramadol has assumed a geometric rate. While the consumption of this substance (tramadol) may have assumed arithmetic progression, its consumption may have assumed a geometric rate. In every street corner now tramadol is sold and consumed without recourse to its consequence.
Tramadol clinically serves as a pain relief but today it is abused and its use has been expanded to other uses such as to enhance productivity for menial labour and sex enhancement. According to experts, an abuse or prolonged use of tramadol exposes the user to psychotic consequences. That is to say that in the nearest future, Dr. Bagudu’s outcry will be a child’s play considering the large number of our youths that will parade our streets insane.
The consequence for prolonged or abuse of tramadol does not begin and end with psychotic effects .Indeed, tramadol abuse is a disaster begging for urgent attention. In few years, an army of youths that are unproductive or less productive will be unleashed on the society.
It is on this strength that public opinion moulders are agitating for the restriction of the insecticide, sniper, out of circulation or on the other hand, raising the price of the product to the high heavens so that it cannot be easily accessed because researches have shown that the insecticide is the major facilitator of suicide.
Drug abuse and economic hardship are Siamese twins that are hardly separated, and if suicide is to be frontally addressed in Nigeria, the issue of ameliorating economic hardship undergone by Nigerians should be sufficiently addressed. It is a common parlance that “a hungry man is an angry man”.
While it is incontrovertible that economic hardship leads to depression and consequently depression, it is enough for us to take our lives because of economic hardship or other related misfortunes. We should bear in mind the advice that “hard times do not last forever but hard men do”.
From the above proposals, it will not be out of place to suggest here that the various agents of socialisation, especially the church and media, the orientation agencies, and the anti- drug agencies have crucial roles to play.
By Prince Charles Dickson, PhD
“And Jesus said to Judas… what you are going to do, do quickly.”
There is a hard, almost rude lesson in that line. History does not wait for the timid to finish their committee meeting. Politics, especially Nigerian politics, is not kind to hesitation dressed as strategy. It rewards those who understand timing, nerve, structure, and the brutal arithmetic of power. That is where the Nigerian opposition now stands: not at the edge of impossibility, but at the edge of urgency.
The first truth is the one opposition politicians do not enjoy hearing at rallies where microphones are loud, and introspection is scarce. They are not getting it right. The evidence is not only in Tinubu’s strength, but in their own disorder. INEC said on February 5, 2026, that there were now 21 registered political parties and warned that persistent internal leadership crises within parties pose a serious threat to democratic consolidation. Eight days later, the commission formally released the notice and timetable for the 2027 general elections. In other words, this is no longer the season of abstract grumbling. The whistle has gone. The race is live.
Yet the opposition often behaves like students who entered the examination hall with righteous anger but forgot their pens. Too much of its energy is spent on lamentation, rumours, courtroom oxygen, personality feuds, and that old Nigerian hobby of mistaking noise for architecture. You cannot defeat an incumbent machine by forming a WhatsApp coalition of wounded egos and calling it national salvation. Voters may clap for drama, but they still ask the unromantic question: who is in charge, what is the plan, and why should we trust you with the keys?
Now comes the more uncomfortable truth. The opposition is not facing an ordinary incumbent. It is facing Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man whose political DNA was forged in opposition. He is not merely benefiting from power; he understands opposition as craft, pressure, infiltration, timing, persistence, and theatre. In his June 12, 2025, Democracy Day speech, he taunted rivals by saying it was “a pleasure to witness” their disarray, while also reminding Nigerians that he once stood almost alone against an overbearing ruling machine. This was not casual banter. It was a warning shot from a politician who knows both the grammar of resistance and the machinery of incumbency.
That is why copying Tinubu’s old template will not be enough. Yes, the coalition instinct is understandable. In July 2025, major opposition figures, including Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, aligned under the ADC banner, presenting themselves as a bulwark against one-party drift, with David Mark as interim chairman. But here is the problem: Tinubu’s own coalition history worked not simply because men gathered in one room and glared at the ruling party. It worked because there was a disciplined merger logic, state-level anchoring, message coordination, and a ruthless understanding of elite bargaining. What the present opposition sometimes offers instead is photocopy politics with low toner: a coalition of convenience trying to frighten a man who practically wrote the Nigerian handbook on political accommodation, defection management, and patient conquest.
This is also why the opposition’s moral complaint, though not baseless, cannot be its only language. Yes, concerns about democratic shrinkage are real. Tinubu himself publicly denied that Nigeria is moving toward a one-party state, even as defections from opposition parties to the APC intensified and his own party welcomed them. But to say “democracy is in danger” is not yet the same thing as building a democratic alternative. Nigerians do not eat constitutional anxiety for breakfast. They want a credible opposition that can protect pluralism and still explain food prices, jobs, security, power supply, transport costs, and what exactly it would do on Monday morning after taking office.
On the government’s side, the picture is mixed enough to make both triumphalism and apocalypse look unserious. Reuters reported this week that the World Bank expects Nigeria’s economy to grow by about 4.2% in 2026, with external buffers improving and the debt-to-GDP ratio falling for the first time in a decade. Inflation had eased to 15.06% in February from roughly 33% in late 2024. Those are not imaginary numbers, and any fair-minded analysis must admit that Tinubu’s reforms have altered the macroeconomic conversation. But the same report warned that the Iran war has pushed fuel prices up by more than 50%, with obvious consequences for transport, food, and household pain. Add the continuing insecurity, underscored again this week by the killing of a Nigerian army general in Borno, and the government begins to look like a man who has repaired the roof but left half the house still flooding. That is not a collapse. It is not a command either. It is a meandering reform under political stress.
So, what must the opposition do, and do quickly? First, it must stop making Tinubu the only subject of the campaign. Anti-Tinubu is not a manifesto. It is a mood. Moods trend; structures win. Second, it must settle leadership questions early and publicly, because no voter wants to hire a rescue team still fighting over the steering wheel. Third, it needs an issue coalition, not just an elite coalition. Security, inflation, youth jobs, electricity, federalism, and institutional reform must become a coherent national offer, not a buffet of press conference talking points. Fourth, it must build from the states upward. Presidential romance without subnational organisation is political karaoke: loud, emotional, and usually off-key by the second verse.
Fifth, it must look seriously at the legal terrain. The Electoral Act 2026 has made party organisation even more central. PLAC notes that the new law tightens party registration rules, removes deemed registration, expands INEC’s regulatory discretion, and preserves the fact that candidates still need political parties as the vehicle for contesting most elective offices because independent candidacy is not permitted. In plain language, parties matter even more now. A fragmented opposition is therefore not just aesthetically untidy. It is strategically suicidal.
Still, there are dangers in the opposite direction, too. A desperate anti-Tinubu mega-bloc could become a cargo truck of incompatible ambitions. If all it offers is the promise to defeat one man, it may reproduce the same habits it condemns once power arrives. Nigeria does not need a ruling party so swollen that democracy gasps for air. But it also does not need an opposition whose only ideology is turn-by-turn revenge. The health of democracy lies somewhere between monopoly and mob. It requires competition with content, not merely competition with bitterness. Tinubu himself, in that same June 12 speech, defended multiparty politics even while mocking the opposition’s disorder. That irony should not be wasted. He has thrown them both an insult and an assignment.
So, yes, the opposition is right to worry. But worry is not a strategy. Outrage is not an organisation. The coalition is not coherent. And history is not sentimental. The man they are up against is ruthless, seasoned, and intimate with the dark arts of democratic combat. He knows the game. Some of his opponents are still learning the rules from old newspaper cuttings.
Which brings us back to the scripture. What you are going to do, do quickly. Not recklessly. Not hysterically. Quickly. Settle your house. Name your purpose. Offer something fresher than recycled indignation. Build a machine that is not merely anti-Tinubu but pro-Nigeria in a way ordinary Nigerians can feel in their pockets and in their pulse. Otherwise, the opposition will keep arriving at battle dressed in borrowed armour, only to discover that the tailor works for the man they came to unseat—May Nigeria win!
By Gloria Onosode
Nigeria is targeting an ambitious $1 trillion economy by 2030. To achieve this, women-led businesses must transition from mere passive observers to primary growth drivers at the heart of the economy and strategic participants in their respective industries.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the increased ownership rate of MSMEs by women represents a significant contribution to economic growth and job creation. Digital empowerment for these enterprises must move from being a social responsibility or gender support initiative to contributing to broader economic development.
To reach the $1 trillion GDP milestone, women-led businesses must be positioned to operate at a macroeconomic scale. This requires moving beyond subsistence trading and into the digital value chain. For instance, a fashion designer in Aba, through digital positioning, can access broader markets and commercial networks and thereby facilitate better record-keeping and data-driven decision-making, supporting improved financial record-keeping, which may be considered in credit assessments by financial institutions.
FairMoney Microfinance Bank (MFB), a bank licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria, contributes to the digital transitioning of small businesses in Nigeria by providing tools specifically designed for the realities of the Nigerian entrepreneur. For women, whose businesses often fluctuate with seasonal demands or family needs, the ability to protect and grow capital is paramount. FairMoney MFB offers features that empower women to move from informal ‘under-the-mattress’ savings to digitised interest-bearing savings products. By embracing digital transition, tech-based saving platforms can enable business owners to set specific goals, such as purchasing new equipment, saving towards business goals in a disciplined manner, while earning interest at applicable rates.
For that business owner who requires immediate liquidity, our flexible savings feature offers interest while allowing for withdrawal access that is subject to applicable terms and conditions to cover emergency restocks. For longer-term scaling, our fixed-term savings feature allows entrepreneurs to lock away funds for a fixed period and accrue interest based on product terms, subject to terms and conditions. By automating savings and providing interest at applicable rates, FairMoney MFB is designed to support financial planning and resilience over time for women-led SMEs.
Nigerian women are among the most entrepreneurial globally, consistently defying structural barriers to build enterprises from the ground up. According to the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Nigeria has approximately 39.6 million nano, micro, small, and medium enterprises. Charles Odii, Director General at SMEDAN in 2024, also recently shared that approximately 72% of these enterprises are now classified as being owned or led by women. This is a significant jump from previous years, which hovered around 40–43%, largely due to the surge in ‘nano’ and ‘micro’ home-based businesses. These female-led enterprises are the primary engines of job creation and community stability.
Despite this drive, women entrepreneurs face a unique set of structural hurdles that stifle their ability to scale. The ‘financing gap’ remains the most formidable obstacle. The World Bank IFC Nigeria2Equal initiative reports that while Nigeria has one of the highest female entrepreneurship rates globally, the credit gap for these women is estimated at over 2.9 trillion Naira, forcing them into the ‘savings and family’ funding model.
The case for supporting these businesses extends beyond equity; it is rooted in the ‘multiplier effect’. Research demonstrates that women reinvest up to 90% of their income into their families and communities, specifically in education, healthcare, and nutrition. Supporting these enterprises is, therefore, a direct investment in Nigeria’s human capital. By bringing these businesses into the formal sector, the accuracy of economic planning will be improved. When a woman-led SME flourishes, the benefits ripple across the entire socioeconomic landscape.
The future of the Nigerian economy is intrinsically tied to the success of its women. When we prioritise women-led businesses, we are not merely fulfilling a gender quota; we can contribute to unlocking economic potential across sectors. By bridging the digital gap and providing robust financial tools for saving and credit to women-led businesses, Nigeria can begin to support the growth of micro-enterprises over time. A $1 trillion Nigeria is not just a dream; it represents a significant opportunity that can be progressively realised by the resilient women entrepreneurs of our nation.
Gloria Onosode is the Director of Enterprise Sales at FairMoney Business
These days, surviving in Nigeria feels like a full-time job on its own.
Before the month even properly begins, salary has already been divided into transport, fuel, food, bills, subscriptions, and every other expense that somehow keeps increasing. For many 9–5ers, the routine has become painfully familiar: wake up early, battle traffic, survive the stress of work, battle traffic again, and get home completely drained, only to realise even the simple things that help you unwind now have to be carefully budgeted for.
Because in this economy, everybody is cutting costs. People are thinking twice before ordering food. They are postponing shopping plans. They are reducing unnecessary spending. And for many, one of the first things to go has been entertainment.
The same streaming platforms and premium subscriptions people once paid for without thinking have now become part of the “maybe next month” list. Not because people suddenly stopped loving movies, series, football, or reality TV, but because when inflation keeps rising, and fuel costs continue to affect everything, entertainment starts to feel like a luxury.
But that is exactly why affordability in entertainment matters now more than ever and why GOtv continues to stand out as a brand that genuinely keeps everyday Nigerians in mind.
Rather than assuming quality entertainment should only be accessible to people willing to spend heavily, GOtv has consistently positioned itself as a platform built with everyday Nigerians in mind, creating options that allow people to still enjoy premium entertainment without having to break the bank.
Take the GOtv Smallie package, for example.
For as low as ₦1,900 a month, subscribers get access to over 35 channels, including approximately 19 to 21 local channels, sports content, and 15+ channels across news, music, movies, lifestyle, kids, and general entertainment.
And for those who prefer longer payment plans, it is also available in:
-
Quarterly – ₦5,100
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Annual – ₦15,000
What makes this even better is that, despite being the most affordable package, Smallie still offers something for everyone.
It is not one of those basic plans where you pay less and get almost nothing. Whether you are the family member who loves African movies, the sports enthusiast who never wants to miss a match, the parent looking for kids’ content, or the person who just wants background TV after a stressful day, there is something to watch.
And for viewers who want even more variety, GOtv has other packages across different price points:
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GOtv Jinja – ₦3,900
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GOtv Jolli – ₦5,800
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GOtv Max – ₦8,500
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GOtv Supa – ₦11,400
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GOtv Supa Plus – ₦16,800
So, whether you’re going for the most affordable option or something with a more premium feel, there’s always a GOtv package that fits comfortably into different lifestyles and budgets.
At a time when everyday decisions are increasingly shaped by cost, GOtv quietly fills an important gap by keeping quality entertainment within reach for more people, because beyond the hustle, the traffic, the deadlines, and the constant pressure of trying to keep up with life in today’s economy, there is still a need for simple moments of joy and escape. Those small pauses in the day where you can switch off, relax, and just enjoy something light without overthinking it.
And that’s really the point: entertainment shouldn’t feel like another financial burden.
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