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| The GDA in The Other Room… |
‘Facebook comment’ but changed my mind because i wanted it on a larger platform
for all and sundry to read and learn few tips.
own voice to the horrible suicide adventures going around in town among
Nigerians. In the last couple of weeks and months, it has been one sad tale of
suicide gesture or the other among Nigerians.
that people were actually jumping into rivers and lagoons to take their own
lives over serious challenges of life which includes inability to pay house
rents, inability to pay children’s school fees, inability to have a quality
medical care or even enjoy a quality living standard and loss of jobs among
many others. So people take their own lives abruptly just to save face from
shame and boredom. What a misery?
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2017 suicide act of one Dr. Allwell Orji through the Lagos lagoon via the
famous Third Mainland Bridge, brought everything to the open. His death caused
public uproar and with that, many other incidences followed. The latest is the
news of two Lagos women, Mrs. Taiwo Momoh and Mrs. Abigail Ogunyinka who tried
taking their own lives between Thursday and Fridayof same week Dr. Allwell Orji
successfully took his own by jumping into the Lagoon. While Mrs. Momoh, a
fabric merchant was caught by the police while trying to jump into the Lagoon, Mrs.
Ogunyinka a food vendor had already successfully jumped into the water before vigilant
fishermen apprehended her and saved her life. The two women complained of being
heavily indebted. While Momoh was said to have lost millions of Naira to some
burue-de-change agents who duped her while trying to convert over N15 million
for a transaction she made, Ogunyinka was indebted to the tune of N150, 000:00
to a micro-finance bank and couldn’t defray her debt. Both decided to escape by
committing suicide.
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| The GDA talks to the Media |
was alleged to have jumped into the Canal View River in Maza-Maza area of Mile
2—Lagos and was equally rescued by vigilant fishermen. So, why are Nigerians
committing suicide and what are the causes of such tragic acts?.
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| The GDA & a Friend |
most happiest people by some international organizations. But that might not be
the case any longer as daily occurrences of suicide acts have dampened the
eligibility of that report. The most shocking aspect of it all is the fact that
while Dr. Allwell Orji’s body was
being searched for in the lagoon, by security agencies, another man’s body was
found which was initially mistaken for Orji’s
body until his family rejected it. The import of this is the fact that many
other people might have been jumping into the lagoon a long while ago; and it
was not until the Orji’s dilemma that the reality hit Nigerians.
wrong with our values in a season like this? What are the things that we must
change about ourselves in order to be safe from shock and anxiety? What exactly
make people lose their sanity and chose death above any other solution?
2017 years when people who didn’t cut
their coats according to sizes got themselves messed up like a flat tire.
Beyond the fact that Dr. Allwell Orji had a secret illness he
battled in his life time, you couldn’t rule out economic pressure from some of
the actions or inactions of suicide act victims. Some of them like the two
ladies, Mrs. Momoh and Mrs. Ogunyinka were under severe
economic pressure and there was no one to bail them out, not even government,
the church or relatives. So people must know that the economy is not friendly
this time around and live within their means instead of dabbling into bandwagon
adventures.
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| The GDA in a Society Without Compassion |
The society we live today is the one that glorifies
material achievements above any other achievement. If you are not rich, nobody
sees you. It is the same thing in the church, the family and every other sphere
of the society. People tend to smile at you when they see that you have little
or plenty money to throw around. Even churches will never honor you with a
title until it is glaring to them that you could fund some of their activities.
The moment you can’t fulfil such imagined ‘status symbol’ again, you are dumped
like a badly burnt piece of paper and emotion could just set in. So nobody
cares for who you are by character but who you are by material wealth and that
is why many people lose composure when society threats them like toilet roll.
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| The GDA & The Drummers |
church in Nigeria, before you can hear the preacher talk about giving out to
people in need, you would have heard him talk about the need for the people
attending worship to give out for ‘the church’s new building project, the
church’s new fleet of vehicles or the church’s new auditorium and sundry other
money-spinning projects’. He will never ask a question like ‘Please, if anyone of you is challenged in
any area, could you kindly see brother so-so-so and so after the service or see
our humanitarian department?’. All the Church keeps talking about is ‘Pay your tithe, pay your offerings, sow
your seeds and bring more, more and more’. For instance, in her account, Mrs. Momoh the fabric merchant who
wanted to jump into the third mainland lagoon claimed all her efforts to meet
her Pastor at the Redeemed Christian Church
of God parish where she worships proved abortive as the man kept dodging
her and referring her to his deputy who couldn’t do anything. So she taught it
well to take her own life since creditors were on her neck and there was no
mercy coming from anywhere. She was indeed fed up with life as her christian
family couldn’t even give her a leaning shoulder. These days, the church,
despite her humongous financial wealth, lacks sympathy. They will rather build
more universities with people’s offerings and bill everyone to death than give
a helping hand to a dying sister or dying brother.
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| The GDA and Happy Admirers |
most unapproachable government. No charity. No empathy. No sympathy. In
Nigeria, every citizen is a government unto himself. You raise your own power,
get your own water and work hard to live in a society where government does not
regulate anything than the liberty to good and healthy living. In Nigeria, your
landlord can wake up anytime and jerk up your rent to a humongous amount that
even spirits can not meet up with, yet government has no agency to moderate
such illogical gestures. Every tenant from Abuja to Lagos and elsewhere pay
through their noses to live a comfortable life and in bad economic seasons like
this, only genuine innovation and trust in God can salvage the people. In many
cases, people who could afford two or three bed room flat in the past are now
relocating to self contain apartments or a single bed room apartment. The
government has no housing policy that could affect mass housing in order to
make life easy for everyone. What about the private school owners?
They are
another set of devils who make life so unbearable for citizens and even in a crazy
economic season like this, school fees are still being jerked up with no
government’s intervention to save gullible Nigerians from losing their sanity. So,
the hear attack spree goes on.
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| The GDA |
Naira or due to other economic variables have lost the will to pay staff salaries at the end of every month. Many
Nigerians in the banking, insurance and media sector are paid according to
targets. They are given unrealistic targets that will make their month-end pay unrealized. Their organizations gives them un-meetable targets to be made in
order to earn their salaries. This is quite rampart in the three aforementioned
sectors of the economy. Most employers of labour are either down-sizing or
right-sizing their work force in order to be able to meet up and even at that,
things are not measuring up. Lot of job losers are now now roaming the street,
with no other skill to survive the trying times. It is such a bad situation and
could also lead to frustration and suicide acts.
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| The Media Industry is in disarray… |
have the tendency to make gest of their colleagues who fall on bad times. These
kind of people wait for the slightest opportunity to make jest of you and they
will not mind showing it to your face and even dumping your company or
friendship during a hard season like this. Many of our people find such acts
disgusting, and it could lead to acts that can warrant suicide action. In a
society like ours, it is when things go smooth with you that you are count
worthy as a ‘great friend’. But once things go bad, there is a way friends move
out of your life in droves that will make you forlorn.
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| The GDA & Friends |
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Once there is an emotional challenge, the problem is yours
alone. But once there is surplus and opportunities, benefits spreads over to
all around you including friends, relatives and the church. The Nigerian case
is even worse that once you share your crisis with others, they begin to make
you a boot of joke at gatherings. So like Jesus, if you are crossed, you hang
alone as friends, family, disciples and the rest take a walk away from your
life. In Nigeria, government seems to only make policies for the rich and
comfortable. Policies that makes life convenient for them. Right now, commodities and consummables that directly affects the lives of the masses like
milk, bournvita, millo, Quaker Oats and other beverages and even insecticide brands
including food stuffs have sky rocketed. Retailers accused the dollar rise for
the killing price rise in commodities. But now that the dollar is going down,
none of these commodities is going down but rather getting costlier. They have
refused to come down with the dollar, thereby making life more difficult for
the poor and average Nigerians. Yet, government has no major policy to
arbitrate on those commodities in order to make life easy for all.
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