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Cyber-bullying, failed dreams and cynical taunts put Nigerian teens into early grave
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How to prevent teenage suicides
Bode, the cheery son of Toba and Idiat Aboaba, lies in a sunless tomb. A rabble of ‘friends’ and digital foes, heckled him to death. Facebook taunts, scornful memes, and cynical tweets by peers haunted the teen into an early grave.
It all started by his attendance of a classmate’s Christmas party. The latter invited Bode and other friends to a Yuletide party/family reunion in the twilight of 2016. Things sailed smoothly at the shindig until a classmate pointed out that Bode’s Burberry shirt and Gucci sneakers were fake.
Consequently, other classmates and friends took turns to heckle Bode, but the jeering didn’t stop at the party. Few days after the event, the host posted pictures taken at the party, on the social media. To Bode’s consternation, his picture was singled out by peers. And it bore a caption suggesting that Bode’s outfit was an utter knock-off of the original designer wear.
“You can’t buy tooshness, fake nigga…wanna-be desperate to represent,” read the caption. Several classmates, including those who didn’t attend the party, shared the picture with lacerating captions, all with malicious intent.
The 16-year-old recoiled from social media and digital space, into a shell. He allegedly left a terse note, saying: “This life is not for me. I am leaving. It is time.”
Idiat, the deceased’s mother, sensed trouble when her son became unusually reticent. “I knew something was wrong with him when he became very moody. He used to be very lively. He lost appetite. He even stopped playing his console games and locked himself in his room. That went on for about three days. I tried to talk to him, to ascertain the reason for his sullenness but he rebuffed me. His father and I decided to back off, hoping it was girl trouble, and it would pass,” said Idiat, the deceased’s mother.
But it didn’t pass. By the time Idiat and her husband discovered the true cause of their son’s moodiness, it was too late.
“My son swallowed rat poison. He consumed two bottles of Sniper. His friends drove him to poison himself. I guess they are satisfied now. They mocked my son to death. He was my only son,” lamented Idiat, the deceased’s mother.
Further findings revealed that Bode was inconsolable because his shaming occurred in the home of a girl, who happened to be his crush. “He had toasted the girl and was waiting for her reply. It was a big bruise on his ego when classmates banded to mock him. Things got to a head by the social media posts circulated about him,” said Dotun, the victim’s cousin.
And very few people will forget in a hurry, the tragic death of Verishima Unokyur. The 19-year-old Babcock University, Ogun State, undergraduate, committed suicide at home in Oshodi, Lagos, after sending the cryptic message to his best friend: “See you in heaven!”
Unokyur, a Social Work student, reportedly hung himself with a tie. Asor, his younger brother, said although he was quiet, he didn’t give any indication that he might commit suicide.
“I was sleeping when my phone rang and when I checked, I saw that it was my mum calling. She said I should come and open the door for her. As I was coming down, I saw my brother dangling like a pendulum from where he hanged himself. That was around 7am.
“He didn’t complain about anything. But I remember that before I went to sleep, he was quiet. I asked what was wrong with him, but he said nothing. My mum had just the two of us; he was my elder brother,” said Asor.
Findings revealed that the deceased had earlier told his mother that he would soon die.
“The two children lost their father about 15 years ago. It was their mother that had been responsible for their upkeep and she made them comfortable. She is a top employee of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
“He (Unokyur) had been telling the mother that he had the feeling that he would die soon.
“The mother attends one of the Pentecostal churches and so when the boy said he would die, she took him to the church and they prayed for him.
“A night to the day of this incident, the boy picked his phone and sent a text message to his best friend, wishing him a happy new year. At the end of that message, he wrote, ‘See you in heaven!’ It was the following morning that his remains were found dangling from his tie,” said a family source.
‘Death will come’
A day after making a controversial suicidal statement on Facebook, informing his friends that he was unhappy and angry at everything, Oluwamuyiwa Oluwagbemileke, committed suicide.
The undergraduate of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), reportedly appealed to people via his Facebook page, to stand by his mother. Afterwards, he swallowed a poisonous substance, which led to his death.
Oluwagbemileke’s Facebook message a day before he took his life read thus: “When man’s life is unstable, worried, downcast and destabilised, things he does right before, will become wrong, no matter the best he put. Such a person lost focus and strength, become unhappy and angry at everything even if he tries to wear a smiling face, the thought of death will come in the scene.”
The deceased’s mother, however, disclosed that her son took his life after he damaged the vehicle he used to work in a sachet water factory. He used the proceeds to augment his school fees, and was pressured by his boss to repair it.
In the aftermath of his death, a friend of the deceased wrote on his Facebook wall: “If you can’t stand by your mother, then who should? And if truly you love her, you wouldn’t take your life. May God forgive you of your sins and have mercy on you.”
In another incident, Jacob Eniola, a 300-level Microbiology undergraduate of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), committed suicide by allegedly drinking Sniper, a pesticide, inside his hostel.
According to his colleagues, Eniola died after he was rushed to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba.
The deceased who resided at Biobaku Hall of the university, was described by friends as very gentle, intelligent and easy going.
A former student leader in the school, Kunle Adegunoye, posted a very touching piece on his Facebook wall, in memory of the deceased, describing him as a good person who was brilliant and lovable.
“It’s hard to understand why he would have taken his own life, but I know in my heart that he has found the peace he could not find in life. God has a plan for him, no matter how hard it is for us to see. I am grateful to have known him and he will always be remembered as the sweet, gentle, fun Enny. My thoughts and prayers are with him and with his family at this sad time,” he said.
Cyberbullying as the next big threat
While the country grapples with suicide cases attributable to hopelessness, neurosis, low self-esteem, aggression, peer heckling and impulsiveness, a new trend often triggered by cyber-bullying and social media taunts has emerged with worrisome dimensions.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the year 2020, approximately 1.53 million people will die from suicide. This bothersome forecast invokes worry at the backdrop of increasing evidence that social media accentuates suicidal inclinations among teenagers, by amplifying social and environmental threats.
One of the widely known casesbwas the death of Phoebe Prince; it is generally believed that her suicide was motivated by cyber-bullying. Cyber-bullying is a huge problem linked to increases in suicide rates,say health experts.
One explanation that has arisen is the cause and effect relationship between social media advertised suicides and younger generations being influenced by them. Aside from kids being influenced by suicide tendencies online, there is the psychological explanation behind the so-called “15 minutes of fame.”
Océane Ebem was the first person who committed suicide live on modern social media platform – The 18-year-old from Égly in the suburbs of Paris – explicitly said: “I want to communicate a message, and I want it to be passed around, even if it’s very shocking.”
An ever-changing digital world has made teenage life drastically different from the analog era; being bullied is no longer something that happens at school or on the playground, it follows teens into their homes and in their bedrooms at night via social media.
According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, 33.8 percent of teens surveyed between the ages of 12 and 17 have been cyberbullied in their lifetime. Various teens surveyed reported being threatened with harm through their cell phones — or having a cyberbully post a mean or hurtful photo of them online.
While there isn’t substantive evidence to make this correlation a conclusive one, experts have speculated that cyberbullying could be one of the reasons teen suicide is on the rise. For instance, the suicide rate for girls between the ages of 15 and 19 doubled between 2007 and 2015 — a time frame parallel to the rise in social media — according to data from America’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Across the globe, the Internet is no longer just a medium that facilitates the movement of data in the information superhighway; it has become a medium for peers to inflict harm on others.
Experts recommend that developing countries like Nigeria should establish laws and policies to discourage the act of cyber-bullying while non-governmental organizations should join the crusade against the vice.
With phone penetration at 98.3 million, according to figures by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), and mobile internet fast overtaking traditional ‘fixed’ internet in the country, the need to protect young consumers from threats such as cyber-bullying and harmful content is becoming an increasingly pertinent issue.
The dangers of exposure to harmful content are also becoming a source of worry. Because reliable statistics are hard to come by in Nigeria, it is hard to estimate the number of younger Nigerians that own a smart phone, but it is believed that there are close to 25 million smart phone users in the country, out of which some 65 per cent are youths. Hate crimes, bigotry and hurtful rumours are spread freely by smart phones and social media.
Suicide in Nigeria at a glance
The Nigeria Police Force classifies suicide under ‘Offences Against Persons’ in sections 326 and 327 of the Criminal Code although the force suffers a dearth of dependable statistics on local suicide rates.
According to the police, Nigeria recorded more cases of suicide in 2007 than in 2008. While there were 154 reported cases in 2007, the figure dropped to 141 in 2008. Lagos State recorded the highest figure of 42 cases or almost 30 per cent of all cases in 2008 alone, followed by Oyo, 13; Anambra, 12; and Bauchi, 12.
In 2007, Bauchi led with 25 cases, followed by Edo, Kano and Anambra with 12 cases each. Section 326 of the Criminal Code condemns “Aiding Suicide” and stipulates: “Any person who procures another to kill himself or counsels another to kill himself and thereby induces him to do so or aids another in killing himself is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for life.”
Dealing with suicide
While the argument subsists on the dangerous trend of cyberbullying, elevated suicide rates have been explained as a reflection of social dysfunction. Riaz Hassan, in his study of suicide in Singapore, observes that what all sociological accounts of suicide have in common is: “They explicitly or implicitly take suicide as symptomatic of what is wrong with society: the higher the suicide rate, the greater the social tension and lack of social cohesion.”
And touting elevated rates of suicide as a consequence of extreme social isolation of individuals in industrialized societies, Emile Durkheim, French sociologist in 1897, proposed the creation of new intermediate groups in society which would unite workers and managers. “The chief role’ of these utopian corporations, which is labelled as a form of ‘centralized guild-socialism’ would be to ‘govern social functions, especially economic functions, and thus extricate them from their present state of disorganization,’ argued Durkheim.
Two enduring traditions of social interpretation, however, trace their roots to Durkheim’s work. The first is the theme of isolated individuals in industrialised society who have few strong social bonds to others which in Durkheim’s interpretation is the principal cause of elevated suicide rates. The other enduring theme is the unchallenged acceptance that increasing or elevated suicide rates indicate the presence of some form of deep-seated social crisis. This notion holds that behind suicide and other youth problems also lies a profound and growing failure of the culture of societies—a failure to provide a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose in our lives, and a framework of values.
More scholarly research work has advocated the significance of improving human relationships, building social capital and strengthening the bonds of kinship, interaction and other forms of human society but can such measures be ever enough to tame the rising fascination with suicide as a leeway out of peculiar problems afflicting peculiar suicidal youth?
Professor Abiodun Adewuya, a Consultant Psychiatrist with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), advised that troubled individuals could develop resilience by cultivating good eating habit and maintaining good mental health. Adewuya urged the Federal Government and other non-governmental organisations to provide a social welfare system to prevent people from committing suicide.
“In other places, the government has this welfare system that can trace people are living in abject poverty or in situations where socially, they need help. And the social workers are supposed to trace them and actually offer them something, but our social service system is very poor. So, someone who is depressed, or who had a mental illness, based on all these things we have outlined, you bring them to me, yes of course, I will treat them. Within a week or two they will leave my ward.
“But I won’t give him a job, I won’t give him a wife, I won’t stop him from being in traffic for three hours before he gets to his house. All those ones are social issues that I cannot tackle,” said Adewuya.
While psychiatrists and other medical experts emphasise increased counselling, among other government and private interventions to aid early detection and treatment of suicidal teens, Funmi Adebayo, an African culture and technology enthusiast, advocates a recourse to local history and culture, its strengths of community and identity in socialising the African teen right from childhood.
“As we try to make sense of the pressures of new technology on the human psyche, and our sense of purpose as productive individuals, we should reach back into the philosophies, science and religions of Africa,” she said.
According to Adebayo, “This would be a new anthropological quest, one not shrouded in colonialism but a search for the ideas, principles and behaviours that can guide our youths and humanity when technological disruption puts it to the test.”
There is no gainsaying the situation demands urgent government and institutional interventions. Adebimpe Adio, a psychiatrist and high school administrator suggested the establishment of functional counselling booths and mental health centres across the nation’s schools and clinics to aid early detection of kids with suicidal intent.
She said: “Parents, teachers, school counsellors, the government and health experts should cooperate in initiating measures to curb the trend. It’s the best we could do for our children and coming generations.”
As the government and concerned parties return to the drawing board, let them not forget the curious case of smiley teens with suicidal bent. Adio identified them as “walking, human time-bombs…They hide their miseries behind infectious smiles but they are only waiting to explode when triggered.”
Sometimes, they simply retreat from cyberspace, school and neighbourhood playgrounds, broken and severely tormented, into the grave.