Nigeria’s latest mental health announcement is no cause for celebration, argues AG AHMED
The Federal Government’s announcement that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved a proposed amendment to the National Mental Health Act to decriminalise attempted suicide would ordinarily deserve applause. Treating a person in suicidal crisis as a criminal is cruel, medically indefensible and incompatible with a modern understanding of mental illness.
But Nigeria must resist celebrating another announcement while the government continues to disregard the mental health law already in force.
The proposal approved by the Federal Executive Council is not yet law. It is an executive bill that must still be transmitted to, debated and enacted by the National Assembly. More importantly, it comes from a government that has failed, for almost four years, to activate some of the most important institutions mandated by the existing National Mental Health Act.
This is not reform. At best, it is the renovation of a building the government has refused to open. At worst, it is another exercise in legislative theatre._
