Popular Nigerian Psychiatrist, Dr. Peters Oluseun Nubi who is very active on social media especially on Instagram commented on the latest high profile suicide case of the Late Afolake Abiola when he said that suicide shouldn’t be sensationalized. The decision to commit suicide according to the Founder of Grace Cottage Clinics has been a long come coming as depression has been building up for a very long time before the physical act happens. It is not a one-day affair. I completely agree with the erudite physician.

The internet broke the story on Sunday, May 29 2022 of the untimely demise of Afolake Abiola who until her death was a 45, some reports say 47 year old chartered accountant with popular telecommunications company, Globacom. She was said to have drunk sniper – a popular pesticide in her Osapa London Lekki residence which led to her early meeting with her ancestors.

Trust the Nigerian public to always have an answer to everything under the sun. A school of thought opined that she took her own life because she didn’t have a husband and was childless. One of her friends debunked that popular assertion and said that she had been battling depression for a very long term but she agreed that indeed she committed suicide.

While I condemn the act of suicide as I am a believer in the sanctity of the precious gift of life from the cradle till its natural end in the grave, I empathize with the late Afolake as depression is really as real as the air that we mortals breathe.

Let us assume that the story of her suicide being triggered by her single and childless status was the accurate version of it, was it so painful as to have warranted her – a successful lady by all standards to have gone to meet her maker in such a cruel way?

The cruel Nigerian Society puts a lot of undue pressure on women to have a husband and children as though they are an end in themselves. This makes many ladies do the unthinkable including being in toxic marriages and with the worst set of male partners all in a morbid bid to satisfy the avaricious appetite of the society.

We still recall that the late Gospel Artiste, Osinachi stayed in the house headed by her alleged abusive and violent husband simply because if she had left, she would have lost the major economic base – singing in churches as she would have been held up as an example of a bad wife not worthy to sing for the Lord.

A woman isn’t a mere object whose gratification ends in being in a man’s house and having his babies. She is also a human being with needs, goals and aspirations. There are many successful women whose global success isn’t judged because they were married with children but because they were accomplished in their various fields of human endeavour.

We all recall the brouhaha that greeted the cover page of a popular Swiss Magazine when it described the former Finance Minister and current D-G of the World Trade Organization, Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as a grandmother. While it is true that indeed she is a grandmother of several grandchildren, that description was rather mischievous as it failed to recognize her various accomplishments as a former Vice-President of the World Bank, two time finance Minister of the most populous country in Africa who was responsible for a debt buy back that saved her country a whooping $30 billion and a one time foreign affairs minister.

The society must realize that not all women are wired for marriage or even child birth. Ace Broadcaster, Funmi Iyanda once said that she had never for a second imagined herself being married. Would you then on the basis of that statement dismiss her as a failure or Simpleton simply because she is a non-conformist? Would you say Oprah Winfrey is a failure because she is unmarried and single at nearly 68? What about other accomplished unmarried or childless women like Genevieve Nnaji, Linda Ikeji, Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, Toyosi Ogunseye of the BBC and a host of others too numerous to mention who are holding their own and competing fiercely in a male dominated environment, would you say they are all failures?

Statistics show that women far outweigh men and so it is unrealistic to expect that all women would get married. Statistics aside, some women prefer to sacrifice the possibility of having a family for their careers or business to blossom. Not everyone is good at multitasking and so they prefer to live with the opportunity cost of giving up one for the other.

If only the harsh and hypocritical society had celebrated the accomplishments of Afolake Abiola and accepted her for who she was taking into cognizance her numerous talents, she may not have been forced to choose such a horrible way to die. If she was held up as a role model for the younger generation, she would have felt loved and there would have been absolutely no reason for her to end her life the way she did on Sunday. How many more Afolake Abiolas would our savage society kill? How many more Afolake Abiolas would our cold and uncaring society send to the gallows to commune with their forebears in the most horrendous of manners? When will this needless marital societal pressure end?

May her soul rest in perfect peace!

SOURCE: https://africavoiceshq.com/2022/05/31/suicide-afolake-abiola-may-have-lived-by-tony-ademiluyi/

Amen