Suicide Rate On The Rise Since The Election Of President Goodluck Jonathan
More Nigerians have been committing suicide since President Goodluck Jonathan was elected and the Leadership newspapers published a report with a long list of the victims of suicide since May 2011 to date.
A Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Ebonyi State University, Mr. Ronald Oginyi observed that suicide was on the rise in Nigeria.
He said: "In contemporary times, things that we are not used to in Nigeria are beginning to happen and even at a very fast rate.
Today there is preponderance of suicide in the country, as against what used to be in the past. In the past, suicide was very rare but today it is almost a daily occurrence.
"The factors responsible for this are many. In Nigeria today, research studies suggest that there is high incidence of joblessness, hopelessness, bleak future and loss of meaning individuals attach to themselves. When an individual feels that he has lost meaning, that he cannot achieve anything, that he has failed woefully, then the individual begins to see a situation whereby it is better for him to take his own life.
"So, wide scale unemployment and poverty are fuelling suicide in the country, as individuals continue to lack the means of keeping themselves afloat.
The university don continued: "Secondly, some religions propagate the concept of martyr in the cause of the faiths. They say if you die for the faith, you will go to heaven. Individuals who acquire such norm, such belief, such tenets by way of religious inclination might try to actualise what they have been taught. In previous years or decades ago, suicide bombing was an anathema in Nigeria but today it is rampant and used as a weapon of war."
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