Jubal Kanayo looks at how the family assistance chain has been turned on its head and children have become breadwinners for their homes, with dire consequences for their future and that of their families.
It is a daily, almost normal sight to see children hawk, roam and do menial jobs while their peers are in school. No, for most of them, their parents are not dead or maimed. What you see is them contributing to the family economy and helping to finance their own education/livelihood. For them, childhood is not free anymore; how much of their needs are met depends on how much they turn in from these ‘business ventures’ they run.
Ultimately, as psychosocial and mental health consultant, Dr. Gladys Eni, put it “the bubble has to burst some time” and the kids have to begin asking questions because of the pattern o demand they have seen from those who should give to them taking from them.
The case of Margaret Ikumu quickly comes to mind. Five days ago, the media space was awash with news that she had to fake her death on Social Media, to gain ‘freedom’ from her mother and her uncle, who, though have refused to fund her education, have turned her into a cash-cow.
After her father’s death, the 19-year-old native of Oni community in Oju local government area of Benue, turned provider for her mother and uncle (who are both healthy, are not people with specific needs and not maimed in any way).
With the help of colluding friends, she got them to share pictures of ‘her’ coffin via WhatsApp, but not before going to her Facebook page to announce her death, adding that she had been secretly buried by her two companions, Marvelous Mary and Nneka Buddy, at Ajah area.
Alarmed, the family established contact with the two ‘undertakers’ who confirmed the death of their beloved daughter.
Ikumu created two fake Facebook accounts using her employer’s daughter, Dr. Nemechi Ugorji’s pictures, and also sent the photograph of her employer’s late wife’s body which she snapped at the hospital to her family through the fake accounts as her remains.
Miss Ikumu, having completed her quest, set about getting another job. She had achieved her aim: to get her mother and uncle off her back. She got another job as a maid and set about making a new life, until the police crashed her party.
But her family would have none of that.
In a dilemma, the family took its doubts to the police, through a petition written by its lawyer, Tony Iji, insisting that the mother insisted on seeing the body of her daughter.
“We, therefore, appeal to the police authority under your leadership to wade in by investigating the incident with the view to establishing the facts and circumstances surrounding her death and eventual burial without the knowledge and consent of her family,” the petition read.
“Note that the late Margaret is from Oju community, in Oju local government area of Benue state, while her supposed friends (Marvelous and Nneka) are of Igbo extraction from the Southeast [and] unknown to our family and community.”
The police swung into action and, after distributing the obituary, the girl’s new employers saw it and contacted them. The rest is history but, why did Margaret do what she did?
Her reason was simple: she wanted to save up and get the education she deserves, away from her utterly demanding mother and uncle.
For Dr. Eni, things need to be seen from the prism of Margaret and other Nigerian children/ young adults who have been turned into breadwinners.
“For kids and teens, they do not understand all the pressure they get. It could be in school, at home, in church or, even, in the neighbourhood. They do not want to be compared to other children, they do not want to be overly burdened; they have their own dreams and area of operation. All parents/guardians need to do is guide.
“In the case of Margaret, her father had died and she was left with her mother, who had no plan for her education. She decided to save some money to do this herself, yet she would not be left alone to do just that. The same mother who failed her would not let her save some money to achieve her dream: to go to school.
“It was too much for her.
“What she did not take a day. It took deliberate planning. She was not go as far as taking her life; she was smart enough to know that was not the answer but, we have to be glad that she stopped at where she did at that time,” Dr. Eni said.
She did worry, though, at what step Miss Ikumu would take next, seeing as her cover had been blown.
“I am utterly scared for her and what she will do next, now that she ws caught out. I hope and pray she does not decide on something more sinister. It would be sad for her and the family,” she said.
For mental health and psychosocial support specialist, Obasi Nzekwu, pressure usually begins from home and, once it is established, could have dire consequences, one of which is mental health illness.
“Pressure on developing minds has the potential to change the circuitry of the brain. It’s a very serious concern because this biological change can place teens at greater risk for mental health disorders as well as substance use and abuse.
“Looking at Margaret, she had no parental guidance and the only path she was trying to create for herself was being obstructed by requests she could do without.
“We must look to understand how she felt before she got to the point where she could not take it anymore and she was bent on doing anything to be free. She felt suffocated by the repeated requests coming from home.”
A ticking time-bomb
In 2019, Temitope Saka, a 17-year-old girl, died after drinking insecticide, Sniper, in Igando area of Lagos State. When Saka became pregnant, her grandma insisted she packed out of the house.
Frustrated, the victim drank the poison and began foaming in the mouth at her boyfriend’s house. She was rushed to the Igando General Hospital, where she died.
Same year, a 19-year-old girl, Uche Obiora, allegedly took Sniper (a pesticide) at her boyfriend’s house, which is a street away from Saka’s grandmother’s.
Also, in May 2019, a 400-level student of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN), Chukwuemeka Akachi, committed suicide.
It was gathered that the deceased carried out the suicide in the solitude of an uncompleted building located at Sullivan Road, Nsukka, where he allegedly slipped into coma after taking two bottles of an insecticide, Sniper.
His unconscious body was discovered by passers-by. He was declared dead at the UNN Federal Medical Centre.
A close friend of Akachi who preferred anonymity said Akachi posted a suicide note on his Facebook wall shortly before he committed suicide.
“Not all teens you see are having a great time. Sometimes, even the one with supposedly great records are a walking time-bomb. No one knows what goes on in their heads.
“There was a generation that jumped into lagoons, hung themselves or ran into the highway in front of moving cars.
“This generation is on another level with the pesticides thing,” noted Nzekwu.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), while the link between suicide and mental disorders (in particular, depression and alcohol use disorders) is well established in high-income countries, many suicides happen impulsively in moments of crisis with a breakdown in the ability to deal with life stresses, such as financial problems, relationship break-up or chronic pain and illness.
In addition, experiencing conflict, disaster, violence, abuse, or loss and a sense of isolation are strongly associated with suicidal behaviour. Suicide rates are also high amongst vulnerable groups who experience discrimination, such as refugees and migrants; indigenous peoples; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBTI) persons; and prisoners. By far the strongest risk factor for suicide is a previous suicide attempt.
It is estimated that around 20 per cent of global suicides are due to pesticide self-poisoning, most of which occur in rural agricultural areas in low- and middle-income countries. Other common methods of suicide are hanging and firearms.
A consultant psychiatrist, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi Araba and coordinator Suicide Research and Prevention Initiative (SURPIN), Dr. Raphael Ogbolu, told a national daily that there are peculiarities of those within ages 13-35. The first thing to consider, Ogbolu said, is the period they live in, which he described as “the Millennials and Generation Z”.
He said the Millennials (Generation Y) are considered to be those born 1980 – 1994 and tend to be raised by single parents, and they are technologically wise.
According to the psychiatrist, Generation Z (post-Millennials, iGeneration, Gen Tech, Digital Native) are those born between 1995 and 2010/2014. They are less traditional and are more likely to be single parents, and are more entrepreneurial, more into phones than Television. He said what these two generations have in common is arguably the advent of social media and the Millennials are likely to reach adulthood around year 2000 at about the time GSM came into Nigeria, this meant that their popular mode of communication was less likely to be face-to-face, and as such both generations more often lived in a virtual world where social media gained a lot of prominence.
Ogbolu said they are therefore more likely to have less social and interpersonal skills compared to the older generations and the problem with this is that a lot of ‘make believe’ and fake personalities come into play.
“For that reason, we have children who will become sad because they cannot show off pictures of their family on vacation abroad when they see their mates showing off such pictures, even if they are fake. This in turn can affect self-worth and lead them to question. This is made worse by a technological world where someone can create a photo-shopped image of a ‘beautiful’ person. All this does is to diminish the self-esteem of a child who already lacks self-belief and confidence.”
He said cyber bullying is also another accompaniment of social media, which these young people have to now deal with. “People who would not ordinarily be bold enough to abuse and bully others are now able to do so in the virtual world, and this has precipitated depression and suicidal thoughts among children who are less resilient…,” Ogbolu said.
The psychiatrist said the other peculiarity with these generations is the advent of designer drugs of abuse and they are more exposed to traditional drugs of abuse already, and with the internet making the world a small global village, they are also exposed to designer drugs that the previous generations could not have ever imagined.
Ogbolu said a third peculiarity that the youth have to deal with is the fact that it cannot censor information as effectively as it should and as such young people are exposed to a barrage of information that may not be age-appropriate and which may not be based on fact.
The founder, of a non-governmental Organisation (NGO), the Mind And Soul Helpers Initiative (MASHI) and Head, English Department, University of Lagos, Prof. Hope Eghagha, lamented on the stigmatisation around mental health citing that once you let it known you visited a psychiatrist for help people will think you are mad, if it is in the office they look at you in a strange way.
“When people have a psychological break down there are all kinds of reason attributed to it. The most popular one in our country is the spiritual attack. Sometimes, they say you have offended the ancestors or the village people, that you have committed an act of taboo. You find some highly placed educated people still piloting such ignorance. We realised that one thing we need to do is to educate people that mental health is very important and mental health crisis can affect anybody without committing any offence and it does not need to be a spiritual attack. We come from a very superstitious society. We are looking at it from the scientific point of view that somebody who contemplates suicide, somebody with suicidal thoughts can be helped,” he said.
Suppressing Mental Health
For Gede Foundation Communications Officer and Mental Health anchor person Zunzika Thole-Okpo, there was nothing normal about Margaret’s decision to do what she did.
“She was pushed to that extent, because something her mother kept doing continued to get to her. Her stability broke. Luckily, she did not think about suicide and one can only hope she does not contemplate it now that she has been caught out.”
She pointed at the continued suppressing of the existence of mental health challenges.
People do not want to agree that, as cute and functional as they are, there are moments of mental break-down from mental overloads.
“When we are in denial, help cannot come. We need to get people to talk more about how they feel and what things they can do to help them feel better. When she complained about the overbearing pressure what was she told? Were they welcoming or did they write her off?
“The key is in embracing each other and not doing the things which have been proven to cause to derail mentally. We all need help at some point and, at this point, Margaret needs all the help she can get. She is having a psychosocial breakdown and she needs help. She needs to join a mental health clinic to be able to move on, because she may lose her job and, then, still end up with the people who make these demands of her,” noted Thole-Okpo.
Help is here
She further stated that there are ways of preventing these sad occurrences.
“According to the WHO, there are a number of measures that can be taken at population, sub-population and individual levels to prevent suicide and suicide attempts.
“Depending on the record of the individual, you can reduce access to the means of suicide (example pesticides, firearms, certain medications), report by media in a responsible way, introducing alcohol policies to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, early identification, treatment and care of people with mental and substance use disorders, chronic pain and acute emotional distress, training of non-specialised health workers in the assessment and management of suicidal behaviour and follow-up care for people who attempted suicide and provision of community support. These step can help and these are the things we promote steadily and as constantly as we meet through the Gede Mental Health sessions.
“We have saved many, exposed many to treatment but, it is not sufficient. There is a lot to be done. Most Nigerians do not know they can get help, even though the help is not far away,” she pointed out, while calling on parents to take more responsibility.
For Dr. Ufot Ndim, role reversals are catastrophic and can be blamed for having the most connections to suicides, errant behaviours and other negative fall-outs.
“Parents are parents and teens/children are what they are. Role reversals damage a lot of the dynamics nature has installed and this is why parental behaviour, reaction and demands have a huge influence on how young people perceive themselves, interact with society and carry on independently. This is an aspect of Child Protection and it is something most parents are yet to learn.
“Protecting your child also means not triggering the things which set the off negatively. If we make our homes conducive for our children as they grow, so that their mental health can be preserved, it will be a huge plus for the family and the nation in the long run,” he said.
