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From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
Elizabethan Humanitarian Life Foundation has raised concern over rising suicide cases among men in the country.
The foundation called on the federal government to urgently intervene by establishing a ministry for Men Affairs to tackle the challenge as well as other issues relating to men.
The Founder/Chief Executive Officer of the foundation, Mrs, Oyinade Samuel-Eluwole, made this known in her
speech commemorating the 2023 International Men’s Day in Nigeria, where she.lamented that men make up 80 per cent of reported suicide cases in the country.
She said : “suicide is a global problem, but it is worrisome to have Nigeria as one epicentre of suicide in the world; and the majority of reported cases are males.”
Expressing regrets, the foundation condemned the frightening suicide statistics in Nigeria adding that reports indicated that suicide incidents in Nigeria are 80.6% males, and out of this, 51.8% are married, while 33.6% are students.
The founder who noted that getting appropriate data is a challenge in the country, submitted that tackling the scourge needs collective approach to save Nigerian men and also discourage them from embarking on such evil mission.
“The major causes are not far-fetched: they are mainly financial lack and challenges, societal expectations, and marital conflicts as a precipitating factor. You can see the need to allow males to express themselves and speak. This intervention and medium is what Elizabethan Humanitarian Foundation stands for to fill.”
Reeling out methods the foundation will employ to tackle the menace , she said the fight must start from the grassroots, to the society and world at large .
On the grassroots model, the foundation intends to ” talk and listen to their hearts, encourage them, and give them hope. Be a bridge between them and individuals, organisations, and governmental agencies.
” We intend to work with Ministry of Education, Information and Strategy, Health, Interior, Youth and Sports, Justice, and Humanitarian Affairs
“Our second strategy is to catch them young. We have written to the Ministry of Education in Lagos State, and we intend to have a round-table discussion with them, so together we can start enlightenment campaign by talking about their challenges be it psychological or emotional part of a curriculum, the right to express themselves without fear or misconception.
“We have also written to the Ministry of Justice, this will help us discuss the running of a campaign in enlightening the public on government perspectives in offenses relating to suicide..
” Part of our experiences we gained at the outreach is the data we generated from our survey of the differentials between the male gender and female gender in terms of the level of social needs of the male gender compared to the female gender. We were also able to underscore the fundamental challenges the males face from the point of grassroots knowledge beyond some esoteric assertions of the issues that are not based on facts.
“We are still collating the figures and as soon as we finish with the data collation and analysis we will share with the public. But, in the interim, we are aware based on our on the ground assessment that we are losing lots of our youths, especially the males, to drugs.
“We also noticed that the lack of financial capabilities of parents has made them to let go of their children to the streets. By our estimation, based on our interaction with the youths on the streets where we visited, eight out of ten of the youths are willing to leave the streets, go back to school, and ready to learn trades, handwork, or technical jobs.
“A high percentage of them opened up to us that they were ready to move out of the streets, if the opportunity comes. A lot of them clamour for free education because many are out of school, mostly because of school fees – even as low as five thousand naira only.”
Sharing her experience on the level of acceptance from the society on rescue mission, Mrs Samuel-Eluwole said : ” the acceptance has been very encouraging from all quarters. It is a known fact that the male gender needs help, and they are prepared to talk about it at this rate.
The acceptance level is expected because parents are losing their children not only to the streets but a lot that are still with their parents are already disconnected. While wives are losing their homes. So the overall picture is like at last, help has come. People move so fast to ask questions on what to expect and are really ready to express themselves.
“Like every other venture, you don’t expect a new initiative to flow or flourish without initial teething problems and challenges. But, despite all these, we are still trudging on. We embarked on a self sponsored opinion survey of males in our society and came to the understanding of what the male gender in our society go through – from cradle to adulthood.We realised that the challenges are enormous.
“We also realised that to accomplish our goal we will need to partner and to collaborate with other bodies and organisations who are in similar advocacy terrain such as we do. They may not necessarily focus on the male gender as we do, but they are obviously fighting for the wellbeing of people in our society.
“Following this, we have joined the Nigerian Network of NGOs, NNNGO, to enable us enjoy the synergy that comes with a network of advocates for a better society.
“We have visited some strategic locations to identify causes of frustrations in males, and we were able to have an idea of the number of males on the streets compared to females.
“The experience gained from our visit is invaluable. It gave a pointer to different causes of male frustration and why we have lots of males on the streets.
“The acceptance has been very encouraging from all quarters. It is a known fact that the male gender needs help, and they are prepared to talk about it at this rate.”
