The founder/CEO of the Elizabethan Humanitarian Life Foundation, Mrs, Oyinade Samuel-Eluwole has lamented the increasing cases of suicide, especially among the males in the country.
She explained that the establishment of the ministry would help in addressing issues relating to men, particularly ,the menace of suicide among male folks.
In a statement on Sunday as the world marks the International Men’s Day, the foundation advocated the creation of ministry of male’s affairs to helping in addressing issues relating to men, particularly ,the menace of suicide.
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.
” The foundation decried the frightening suicude 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.”
According to her, sourcing of appropriate data has been a challenge, ” but we have to tackle this menace collectively to avoid losing our men to suicide.”
The statement reads, ” 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.
” In 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 tend 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’s, 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.”
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