Quiet and unassuming, he went about life so easily that nothing suggested he had worries tucked in his heart. At age 21, a first degree in Quantity Survey was already done and dusted.
Everything appeared smooth sailing for Toju Daibo until last Saturday when the fresh graduate of the University of Lagos reportedly plunged into the lagoon from the Third Mainland Bridge. The sudden turn of events has raised lots of questions, many of which still beg for answers.
“We have not heard anything from the police. His body has not been found and I want them to find him; everybody is just keeping quiet as if he does not have people. Toju is somebody; he has a family. They should find him, where is he? What happened to him? Where is Toju?” she bemoaned. A few days later, a textile dealer on Lagos Island, Titilayo Momoh, contemplated suicide at the same spot but was rescued by policemen on patrol before she jumped into the lagoon.In November 2018, a middle-aged man and official of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Sheriff Oladejo, went on a suicide mission on the bridge.That day, there was light traffic along UNILAG waterfront end of the bridge as a result of a vehicle that broke down on the road.
About 10 kilometers from the Third Mainland Bridge, one 36-year-old Ikechukwu Ibeh, on a suicide mission was rescued on Tuesday, January 21, 2020 by LASEMA officials in the marine unit after he plunged into the lagoon from the Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge. “The selected design allows open, scenic vistas to remain intact, while preventing anyone from easily jumping to the water below. The net will have minimal impacts to the architecture,” said the firm handling the barrier construction.
Ironically, it is also infamous as the busiest suicide bridge in the country with 140 deaths recorded so far. In 2004, a suicide prevention barrier was installed to deter would-be victims.A psychologist at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof. Toba Elegbeleye, told Sunday PUNCH that many people opted for bridge suicide because it offered an easy way to end it all.
Jaiyesinmi noted that regular police patrol of the bridge and construction of watchtowers would go a long way in monitoring suicide attempts. In May 31, 2019, a student at the Department of Hospitality Management Technology, Lagos State Polytechnic, Ezekiel Mayowa, killed himself after he was reportedly dumped by his girlfriend.
Within three months’ interval, two live-in lovers in the Shibiri area of Lagos, Adenike Fatai and Bayo Atanda, also ended their lives. The boyfriend, a tailor, reportedly gulped sniper sometime in June 2019. Pretty and cheerful-looking, there was no clear pointer that the Kogi State indigene was depressed, let alone nursing such thought, until a suicide note was found in her room. “I did this because I see nothing worth living for in this world,” the note read in part.Factors ranging from economic hardship in the country to the lack of family and social support system have been attributed to the spate of suicide in Nigeria.
“People now live alone without the family support. If it were in those old days, when one was down, the family would be there to support them; the extended family would be a safety net. At that stage, the sociologist said the victim would have lost the appreciation of self-existence, social environment and death ultimately became “an achievement” they would desire.
A psychiatrist at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, Adeoye Oyewole, said although suicides could have some genetic underpinning, he attributed the bulk of the cases to socio-economic problems and lack of family support system.
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