When a Nigerian survives a suicide attempt, the country should offer a way back to life. Why must we debate whether to offer a prison cell?
Imagine a mother sitting outside an emergency ward in Ibadan.
Her handbag lies open on her lap. Inside are a telephone with a cracked screen, some folded hospital receipts and money that will not cover everything the doctors have requested. A neighbour has brought her a bottle of water. She has not opened it.
Her daughter is alive.
For the past hour, those four words have been the only things holding her together.
Then someone mentions the police.
The mother looks up. Will her daughter be arrested? Will the family have to find money for a lawyer as well as treatment? Should she tell the doctor everything, or conceal the very information that might help save her child?
At the moment when honesty matters most, fear enters the conversation.
That is what criminalisation can do. It places another locked door between a person in crisis and the help they need.
Survival should begin recovery. It should not begin a criminal case.
On 13 October 2026, Nigeria’s Senate confronted this choice as a bill sponsored by Senator Asuquo Ekpenyong, representing Cross River South, passed its second reading. The proposal seeks to decriminalise attempted suicide and establish a framework for prevention and support. Reports of the debate also recorded Senate President Godswill Akpabio defending the retention of imprisonment for survivors. The bill now goes to committee scrutiny; it has not yet become law.
There is reason for hope in its progress. There is also reason for profound concern about the thinking it has exposed.
A legislature entrusted with protecting Nigerians should not struggle to recognise that a person who has narrowly survived death needs care.
What, precisely, would prison cure?
Would it treat depression? Resolve trauma? Restore a person’s capacity to imagine a future? Would a criminal record help someone rebuild a livelihood, return to university or regain the confidence to ask for help?
Before defending punishment, its advocates must explain how it protects life.
Authority is not evidence. A confident declaration from the presiding chair is not a suicide-prevention strategy.
Ekpenyong deserves credit for bringing the question into the chamber and insisting that care must accompany legal reform. But this cannot remain one senator’s compassionate proposal. It must become a shared legislative responsibility.
The lives at stake belong to every constituency.
Consider another imagined Nigerian.
A small business owner in Aba once employed four people. Now he opens his shop alone. His debts have grown. At home, he tells his children that everything will be fine because he cannot bear to hear himself say otherwise.
He begins to sleep badly. He withdraws from friends. The telephone becomes something he fears. When someone asks how he is doing, he supplies the answer expected of him: “We thank God.”
That sentence can express genuine gratitude. It can also conceal suffering that a person has no safe place to disclose.
Financial difficulty does not inevitably lead to suicide. Most people experiencing hardship do not become suicidal. But suicide can arise through an interaction of psychological, social, biological and environmental factors. Depression, alcohol problems, violence, loss, isolation and acute crises can all matter. There is no single story that explains everyone’s distress.
This complexity makes careful assessment essential.
It makes blanket punishment indefensible.
A person does not need to fit our preferred picture of mental illness before deserving protection. Nor should access to compassion depend on whether their suffering seems sufficiently dramatic to an official.
Pain does not become unreal because an observer cannot understand it.
In too many Nigerian conversations, distress is met with comparison.
“Do you know what other people are going through?”
“Are you the first person to lose a job?”
“Others have suffered more.”
Perhaps they have. But suffering is not a competition whose winner earns permission to seek treatment.
We would not tell a person struggling to breathe that someone in the next ward has a worse illness and therefore they should stop complaining. Yet we routinely expect people in psychological crisis to recover through shame.
We tell men to be strong, then make it difficult for them to admit that they are struggling. We tell young people to speak up, then dismiss their disclosures as attention-seeking. We tell women to preserve their homes, then sometimes turn away when they describe violence inside them.
The law should help us move beyond these habits.
It should not give them the authority of the state.
Imagine a university student in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria who has stopped attending lectures.
Her roommates call her lazy. Her family thinks she spends too much time on her phone. She has begun to believe that she is a burden, although those who love her would be devastated to know she feels this way.
When she finally tells someone that she is frightened of her own thoughts, that disclosure is an opportunity.
A listening ear, timely assessment and continuing support can create a path towards recovery. A threat may close the conversation before help can begin.
The World Health Organization identifies fear of legal consequences and stigma as barriers to seeking help. Its guidance supports decriminalisation alongside funded prevention, trained responders and accessible, rights-respecting services. )
A frightened person should not have to choose between telling the truth and feeling safe.
Those defending criminalisation may believe punishment will deter suicide attempts. That concern should be addressed seriously, because changing the law requires changing the assumptions beneath it.
Protecting life is a legitimate objective. The question is whether criminal prosecution helps achieve it.
Removing punishment does not mean approving of suicide. It means choosing a response intended to keep people alive and help them recover.
We can oppose suicide unequivocally while refusing to prosecute those who survive an attempt.
We can affirm the value of life through treatment, protection, follow-up and practical support.
Indeed, if we believe life is sacred, our response to survival should make that belief visible.
There is a particular responsibility here for religious leaders. Churches and mosques can offer belonging, meaning and practical assistance. They can also help families recognise when professional care is needed.
Faith and treatment can stand together. Prayer need not become a reason to delay medical help. A sermon can encourage someone to seek care without portraying their suffering as a moral disgrace.
The message should reach every pulpit and prayer ground: protecting a person in crisis is an expression of our duty to one another.
Yet public indignation alone will not change the Senate.
A furious news cycle can end with the offending clip forgotten, the bill delayed and the punitive provisions intact. If we want a different outcome, we must organise beyond outrage.
The first task is to put human experience into the committee process.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, emergency clinicians and legal experts should submit coordinated evidence. People with lived experience and bereaved families should have opportunities to contribute voluntarily, with confidentiality and emotional support.
Nobody should have to expose their most painful experience to television cameras to make lawmakers care.
Written submissions, private testimony and anonymised accounts can all help senators understand what happens between a crisis, an emergency ward, a police encounter and a family’s attempt to rebuild.
The most useful testimony will show the whole pathway: where help was available, where fear delayed it, what treatment made possible and what remains missing.
Recovery must be part of that story.
People can return to work, continue their education, repair relationships and build meaningful lives after a suicidal crisis. Parliament needs to hear about those futures.
A survivor is a person with a future, not merely an incident in a police file.
The second task is to engage hesitant senators directly.
Public accountability matters. So does the patient work of persuasion.
A delegation combining a clinician, a legal expert, a trusted community or faith leader and a person willing to share lived experience could meet senators in small groups. Such meetings should address the actual objections: fear that reform will encourage suicide, uncertainty about state laws, concern about cost and doubt about whether services can respond.
Each objection deserves a clear answer and a practical proposal.
Senators should also visit emergency departments and mental health services through arrangements that protect patients’ privacy. Let them hear from staff who must manage a crisis when a family cannot afford transport, when specialist care is distant or when no follow-up system exists.
They need to see what their votes will mean outside Abuja.
And there must be room for them to reconsider.
A senator who changes position after hearing evidence should be encouraged to support reform. We should demand accountability without making stubbornness the only route by which a public figure can preserve dignity.
The purpose of persuasion is a changed vote and a better law.
The third task is to make constituent support organised, specific and sustained.
Professional associations, student bodies, disability organisations, market associations, labour unions and civil society groups should request meetings with their senators and submit concise constituency letters.
The request should be unmistakable: support the removal of criminal penalties for attempted suicide, support accessible crisis care and support a funded implementation plan.
Ask for a written response.
Ask what amendments the senator will support.
Ask what happens next in committee.
A public tracker could record verified statements, committee developments and recorded votes where available. It should distinguish support, opposition and an unanswered request. Accountability loses credibility when silence is presented as a vote that never occurred.
This campaign should cross party, religious and regional lines. Psychological crisis does not check a voter’s party card before entering a household.
The fourth task is to resolve the legal questions properly.
Reporting on the debate identifies concerns about the relationship between federal reform and state criminal laws. Those concerns require careful legislative work. They should not become an indefinite excuse for retaining punishment. (thecable.ng)
The committees should bring federal and state legal authorities together, identify the provisions requiring amendment and publish a clear route towards consistent reform. Model state amendments and coordinated engagement with state assemblies could help prevent a patchwork in which access to a humane response depends on where a crisis occurs.
The goal must be a workable law, with clear duties for the institutions expected to implement it.
The fifth task is to attach money, services and deadlines to compassion.
Decriminalisation is essential, but a family cannot obtain treatment from a legislative announcement.
Imagine that mother in Ibadan returning home with her daughter. Prosecution is no longer a threat. That is a major change. But what happens if the next appointment is unaffordable, nobody explains the follow-up plan and the family cannot find help when another crisis develops?
Removing fear must be followed by building access.
The implementation plan should specify how emergency care, assessment, referral and follow-up will work. It should include training for frontline health workers and police, practical links between hospitals and community services, and support for people who cannot afford care.
Any proposed crisis telephone service must have trained staff, reliable operating arrangements and clear routes to local assistance.
A helpline that nobody answers is a promise abandoned at the moment it is needed.
Care must also respect dignity. Reform should not replace criminal punishment with indiscriminate confinement. Assessment and treatment require safeguards, attention to consent and capacity, and the least restrictive response compatible with safety.
Parliament should require implementation reports showing where funds went, which services became available and where gaps remain. Announcing a programme is not the same as delivering one.
Finally, the Senate’s leadership should help repair the public message.
Senator Akpabio should reconsider his reported position, acknowledge the distress such rhetoric can cause and affirm that Nigerians in suicidal crisis deserve protection and care.
That would be an act of responsibility.
Leaders will sometimes speak from incomplete understanding. Their next decision matters: defend the error, or learn from it.
The Senate as an institution should also be judged fairly. The bill’s passage through second reading shows that the chamber is not of one mind. There are allies to strengthen, undecided members to persuade and legislative opportunities to protect.
We should build on that opening.
Return to the mother outside the emergency ward.
She is not asking the Senate to settle every philosophical question about suffering. She is not asking for a perfect health system by tomorrow morning.
She wants her daughter to live.
She wants to tell the doctor the truth without fearing what that truth might trigger. She wants treatment she can reach, advice she can understand and a country that will allow her child to recover without the additional burden of being labelled a criminal.
Those are reasonable expectations of a government.
For anyone reading this who recognises something of their own distress in these pages: recovery is possible, and you deserve support. Tell someone you trust and seek professional help. If you may act on suicidal thoughts, seek immediate help at the nearest emergency department and ask someone to stay with you.
For lawmakers, the responsibility is equally direct.
Listen. Examine the evidence. Remove the punishment. Fund the care.
One day, a family may never know the name of the senator whose vote helped make treatment easier to obtain. They may simply remember that, at the worst moment of their lives, someone answered, someone helped and their loved one came home.
That is an achievement worthy of public office.
Let survival be the beginning of a second chance. Let Nigeria’s law help keep that chance alive
* Ahmed, MD, LLM, Forensic Psychiatrist, Professor and Chair of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. https://agahmed.ca/blogs/