23rd March, 2017
Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, lamented the increasing rate at which people commit suicide in Nigeria.
He warned that suicide rates in the country would continue until the citizens learn to be mature concerning every situation they find themselves.
Lagos state recently witnessed the death of a medical doctor, whose name was given as Allwell Orji. He was said to have jumped into the lagoon with his body retrieved days after.
At the Maza-maza end of the state, a woman was reportedly rescued as she wanted to jump into the lagoon.
Obasa argued that suicide rates in Nigeria was not just because times were hard.
“Suicide rates will multiply in Nigeria not because times are hard. Times were hard during the Biafran war. The problem now is that adults are increasingly immature. The society is increasingly frivolous. People have no true friends and friends now see themselves more as rivals,” he stated.
Obasa decried that the society had now grown to a level where the pursuit for success was now measured by wealth rather than hardwork, integrity and self-restraint.
According to him, “the race is measured by wealth and nothing else. Set backs are mourned as wasted life by those who should give love and genuine support. So a troubled man becomes the butt of jokes by those in whom he has reposed his trust.
“Calamities befall men and their friends shed tears in the morning and run them down at night. Adults are now children. A man can’t even tell his wife serious issues because he is sure she won’t understand. He has seen her divulge little details to her family. He has heard her eulogise wealth and curse setbacks as abomination. She has a little merry heart.
“The pastor can’t be trusted because he is given to flashy cars and worldly ambitions. He rates men by their earthly successes and wealth. He can’t be trusted because wealth, he says, is the ultimate blessing from God. Everyday he celebrates only the rich.
“So the troubled man walks around with his troubles in his heart, smiles at all the children masquerading as adults around him. One day, he would weigh it all over again and say: ‘No! It’s enough.”
Obasa further decried that true mature friends were now very scarce bringing society to the need to be real and citizens to be trusted friends, especially when the need arose.