I will never forget the sad and saddening picture of the late Amarachi Ugochukwu, the 32-year old staff of Globus Bank, Ikorodu, Lagos, who committed suicide on 8 January 2024. She had gulped down a toast of Sniper insecticide; the entire bottle.

What made her forgo and override the most basic of instincts; personal or animal survival. Face to face with death, even animals fight with all their might, to remain alive. Not even a rat goes gently into that eternal midnight.

So, what would have made somebody choose to extinguish his or her own “sweet, sweet life?” So, may we interrogate the personal aspect, first. People have asked what absurdity gave birth to that abject thought of suicide? When and how was it planted in her, we would assume, a well-ordered mind? We tend to forget that suicide is the most intense and unalloyed revolt; that it stands against not just life but being itself, casting aside as it were, the most precious gift of God which is life. Common, dear reader, nobody will argue against the axiom that every person should ordinarily shrink from self-annihilation. Self-preservation is ingrained in us, thus, babies still suckling at their mother’s breasts cry if they are hungry or  uncomfortable in any way though they do not know that they actually do so. Really, babies do not even know they exist. But they want to live! 

So, what triggers suicide must be beyond self. It must proclaim hopelessness so terrible that it snuffs out every hope that things, no matter how ugly, would always get better. Suicidal is an act of defiance against one’s own personal life because it is a most consequential and most permanent self-hurt because it means deleting oneself from life and planet Earth.

The social media have been awash with blames against the woman who killed herself. Some persons have also called attention to the reports that she drew attention to how the socio-economic milieu overwhelmed her and she decided to opt out through an act so violent and relentless that it voided her own dear life in an act so despicable that it will never cease to shock because the death she suffered was dreamed up by her own mind and orchestrated by her own hands.

Yet, the question has to be asked and answered: how much is the life of an individual removed from societal effects?

May we never forget that Amarachi left a suicide note; “NOTHING IS WORKING IN MY LIFE, MY FIGURES ARE LOW, MY BRAIN IS CLOGGED UP, THE ECONOMY IS GETTING HARDER, MY DECISIONS ARE WRONG, and MY MIND IS MESSED UP. I’M SORRY MOM, I’M SORRY DAD, I’M SORRY NENE, OKWE, TUTONAZOR, CHUCHU, IFUNANYA. DEAR LORD HAVE MERCY ON ME!”

Kai! Ewo! What demonic battles finally overwhelmed Amarachi? Did it dawn on her that her small boat was too fragile to survive in the shark-infested and windy seas which Nigeria has become? Did she find life to be nothing but an unending headache in the middle of an ever continuing nightmare?

Many have been blaming Amarachi for lacking the courage to face the headwinds of life, some concluded she embezzled money belonging to her bank or that she couldn’t meet her monthly targets as a marketer. Yet, the mass media has failed spectacularly as usual; adding exactly nothing to the stories let out by Amarachi’s colleagues and associates as the story was breaking. What is the name of Amarachi’s home town?

Which schools did she attend? When did she leave school? Was she over-burdened by debts? Did she work abroad for a while? Was she the Amarachi Ugochukwu that schooled and worked in Cyprus according to a Facebook account?

Nigerian journalists have not added a jot to the body of knowledge about Amarachi. Why has no Editor found it fit to send a reporter to the Ikorodu, Lagos, branch of the bank where Amarachi worked and where she committed suicide to seek out her friends who could add something to the story about Amarachi?

How was Amarachi bleeding so terribly that she decided it was best to end it all? It is disappointing that Nigerians have seen nothing wrong in condemning Amarachi for losing hope, in the face of the hardships she encountered. But do they know that just getting by is different from living the good life and it is actually to be traveling on a road that leads to nowhere?  Why did such a tragedy not arouse people from their sleep to ask why Nigeria is bereft of safety nets? If Amarachi was about to lose her apartment, perhaps because she couldn’t meet her rent obligations, she would have no homeless shelter to run to until fair weather smiles upon her again. If Amarachi couldn’t afford to feed herself, Lagos has no kitchens serving free food to the down-trodden where she could eat. Nigeria is a merciless desert; where you fall is where you lie and die.

And there is this unasked and so unanswered question: Did Nigeria so frustrate Amarachi that she couldn’t resist the invitation of suicide? Did she borrow money to start a business and then government policies or lack of policies and sundry taxes and the wickedness of government officials combined to push her into an early grave?

We will never know. Her death has been treated the way Nigeria treats serious matters; with insulting casualness and stupefying indifference.