•Soldiers’ retrieval of suicide bidder from Lagos Lagoon is act of heroism

Soldiers in the 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, on Monday, said they stopped a woman who plunged into the Lagos Lagoon in a bid to kill herself from committing suicide. The woman, identified as Mrs. Francesca Spark, jumped into the lagoon close to 81 Division Officers’ Mess in Marina, Lagos, but gallant officers of the Army plunged in after her and fished her out.

A statement by Acting Deputy Director of Army Public Relations, Lieutenant-Colonel Olabisi Olalekan Ayeni, said troops of 65 Battalion of the Army deployed at the officers’ mess sighted Mrs. Spark as she plunged into the lagoon and swiftly applied their military riverine skills and ingenuity to rescue her. The exact date of the incident was not made clear, but a masked picture of the rescued woman was shown. According to the Army spokesman, the woman “was given first aid and stabilized by the battalion medical team. After stabilization, the family was contacted and she was handed over to her husband, one Mr. Spark Oghene Ovie residing at Awoyaya, Lagos.”

The Army statement further said the General Officer Commanding (GOC), 81 Division, Major-General Muhammed Takuti Usman, praised the soldiers for being observant, and for their ingenuity, courage and gallantry. He expressed pleasure that soldiers brought their training in disaster management to bear in a critical situation where the life of a fellow citizen could have been lost, noting that the rescue was a military operation other than war as gets conducted during emergencies or natural disasters.

By all means, the soldiers deserve all the applause they can get for the great act of gallantry in plunging after Mrs. Spark after the suicide bid. And there are many to applaud the officers for: their eagle-eyed alertness that saw the woman take the plunge, their selfless composure in swiftly plunging in her trail to rescue her, and the alacrity in applying medical care that stabilized the embattled woman. It is also to be highly commended that the military restored Mrs. Spark to her family rather than pursue the controversial line of applying the law that criminalises attempted suicide, which amounts to double jeopardy for the suicide victim.

What could have led a person to consider all life’s options so foreclosed as to resort to suicide is a matter for mental health medics to properly interrogate. But we recall that in February, last year, the ninth House of Representatives processed a private member bill that sought to decriminalise suicide by replacing the stipulated penalty of one year imprisonment for attempted / failed suicide in the Criminal Code Act, 2004 with sentence to compulsory counselling and community service for a period not less than six months. In his argument for the proposed amendment bill, its sponsor, Rep. Francis Waive (APC, Delta) noted that mental health challenges such as depression, long term substance abuse, schizophrenia, mood disorder, psychosis and other psychiatric disorders are the most common risk factors linked to suicidal behaviour. He said inter alia: “Research has also shown a strong link between suicide and mental illness/disorder. However, it continues to be treated as a crime in Nigeria. This means that a person who survives a suicide attempt will be harassed, arrested and punished by the state with an imprisonment term of up to one year. This (amendment) bill suggests that suicidal people are in need of effective treatment, counselling and assistance, not punishment. Penalising attempted suicide is hardly a prevention method, instead the law should direct the appropriate authorities to assist the traumatised attempters…”

We are not certain how that amendment bill eventually ended up in the last assembly, but we agree totally that suicide bid, rather than being a criminal act, is an act of desperation and misguided cry for help in acute distress. We argued before that what the suicide bidder needs is care, not punishment; and rather than that any form of penalty be stipulated against him/her, the bidder should be referred for mental health attention. That is where we slightly differ from Army personnel in the case of Mrs. Spark, highly commendable as their acts are. Handing the lady back to her husband may not adequately address her challenges – especially since it was under the husband, apparently, she piled up destructive venom and headed out to the lagoon unchecked. The woman needs urgent mental health care and socio-economic therapy as would assuage the conditions that motivated her to suicide attempt.

This incident serves as another wake-up call to communal sensitivity. Mrs. Spark must have betrayed some signs of her acute desperation before heading out to the water edge, but nobody including her husband noticed. Shame! And there is as well the onus on the power elite to work at making living conditions conducive to lessen the disposition to suicide.

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