Nigerian police say they have rescued nearly 500 people from a building in the northern city of Kaduna where they were detained and allegedly tortured.
Those held were all men and boys - some were found chained up.
Kaduna state's police chief Ali Janga told the BBC the large house was raided following a tip-off about suspicious activity.
He said it was a "house of torture" and described it as a case involving human slavery.
The detainees, not all Nigerian, said they had been tortured, sexually abused, starved and prevented from leaving - in some cases for several years.
It is not clear how they got there. Some of the children told the police that their relatives had taken them there believing the building to be a Koranic school.
But the police say there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the building was ever a school.
Eight suspects have been arrested.
The police chief said the detainees - some with injuries and starved of food - were overjoyed to be freed.
They were taken to a stadium in Kaduna overnight to be cared for while arrangements are made to find their families.
Nigerian authorities say the nearly 500 freed captives will be given medical and psychological examinations.
BBC
Friday, September 27, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Man confesses to serial murders of 15 women in Nigeria
A suspect has confessed to murdering 15 women after luring them into budget hotel rooms in Nigeria, potentially ending a killing spree that has terrorised the country’s oil capital, Port Harcourt.
Gracious David-West, believed to be 39 and unemployed, said that “an irresistible urge to kill” had repeatedly driven him onto the streets in search of female victims over the past two months.
“I take a girl into a hotel, we eat, make love and sleep,” he told a press conference in Port Harcourt, where he was arrested last week. “Later I wake up in the middle of the night and put a kitchen knife to her neck ordering her not to shout.”
After turning up the volume on the television, Mr David-West said he would tie his victims up with strips torn from the pillow-case on his bed before strangling them.
“I don’t know what comes over me to kill,” he added. “After I have killed I feel remorse and cry but after that the irresistible urge to kill comes over me again.”
At least nine of the victims were killed in Port Harcourt, including three murdered over a single weekend earlier this month.
The killings prompted widespread anger in the city, which mounted after the regional police chief, Mustapha Dandaura, suggested that the women were partly responsible for their deaths, saying, “I don’t know why people will be sleeping with people they don’t know.”
He also suggested that some of the victims were prostitutes.
Women’s groups marched through the city holding banners reading, “Respect women, don’t kill them.”
The regional government apologised for appearing to blame the dead women.
“A lot of the victims might have been careless, but it would be wrong to address them as prostitutes,” it said in a statement.
Police will hope Mr David-West’s confession will bring an end to the killings. However, it is unclear if he acted alone after he admitted to being an affiliate of one of Nigeria’s most notorious university fraternities.
The suspect said he used to be a member of Deebham, the street-wing of the Klansmen Konfraternity at the University of Calabar.
University fraternities in Nigeria have long been linked to voodoo, violent crime and even murder. Some created street gangs in order to compete for territory outside campuses.
Deebham, whose members are not generally students, has been linked to the kidnapping of expatriate oil workers and rich Nigerians.
It has no record, however, of killing and raping women and Mr David-West insisted that he had not acted on behalf of the group.
"I kill alone," he said.
The Telegraph
Gracious David-West, believed to be 39 and unemployed, said that “an irresistible urge to kill” had repeatedly driven him onto the streets in search of female victims over the past two months.
“I take a girl into a hotel, we eat, make love and sleep,” he told a press conference in Port Harcourt, where he was arrested last week. “Later I wake up in the middle of the night and put a kitchen knife to her neck ordering her not to shout.”
After turning up the volume on the television, Mr David-West said he would tie his victims up with strips torn from the pillow-case on his bed before strangling them.
“I don’t know what comes over me to kill,” he added. “After I have killed I feel remorse and cry but after that the irresistible urge to kill comes over me again.”
At least nine of the victims were killed in Port Harcourt, including three murdered over a single weekend earlier this month.
The killings prompted widespread anger in the city, which mounted after the regional police chief, Mustapha Dandaura, suggested that the women were partly responsible for their deaths, saying, “I don’t know why people will be sleeping with people they don’t know.”
He also suggested that some of the victims were prostitutes.
Women’s groups marched through the city holding banners reading, “Respect women, don’t kill them.”
The regional government apologised for appearing to blame the dead women.
“A lot of the victims might have been careless, but it would be wrong to address them as prostitutes,” it said in a statement.
Police will hope Mr David-West’s confession will bring an end to the killings. However, it is unclear if he acted alone after he admitted to being an affiliate of one of Nigeria’s most notorious university fraternities.
The suspect said he used to be a member of Deebham, the street-wing of the Klansmen Konfraternity at the University of Calabar.
University fraternities in Nigeria have long been linked to voodoo, violent crime and even murder. Some created street gangs in order to compete for territory outside campuses.
Deebham, whose members are not generally students, has been linked to the kidnapping of expatriate oil workers and rich Nigerians.
It has no record, however, of killing and raping women and Mr David-West insisted that he had not acted on behalf of the group.
"I kill alone," he said.
The Telegraph
Kidnapped aid worker killed by ISIL affiliate in Nigeria
An armed group aligned with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant killed one of six aid workers it abducted in northeast Nigeria.
The Nigerian aid workers, a woman and five men, were captured in July by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) during an ambush on their convoy close to the border with Niger.
"The armed group holding captive an employee of Action Against Hunger, two drivers and three health ministry personnel, have executed a hostage," the Paris-based charity said in a statement on Wednesday, without giving details of the identity of the victim.
"Action Against Hunger condemns in the strongest terms this assassination and urgently calls for the release of the hostages."
The charity said it was "extremely concerned and is fully mobilised to ensure that the remaining hostages can be quickly and safely reunited with their families".
ISWAP released a video following the abduction, showing a female charity member pleading for the release of the hostages, with her five male colleagues behind her.
The kidnapping was the latest to target aid workers in the conflict-hit region after the abduction and the killing of two women working for the International Committee of the Red Cross last year.
ISWAP is a splinter faction of Boko Haram that swore allegiance in 2016 to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It has repeatedly attacked military bases and targeted aid workers in northeast Nigeria.
Aid group suspends operations
International aid agency Mercy Corps said on Wednesday it suspended operations in two northeast Nigerian states worst-hit by the armed groups after the Nigerian army closed four of its offices in the region.
"Mercy Corps is suspending operations in Borno and Yobe states following the closure of four of our field offices by the Nigerian military," Amy Fairbairn, its head of media and communications, said in a statement.
"We have not yet received an official reason from the Nigerian authorities for the closure and we are seeking to work with them to resolve this as soon as possible," said Fairbairn, adding Mercy Corps' work in other parts of Nigeria would continue.
The Nigerian army has accused humanitarian organisations of working with armed groups.
In December 2018, it suspended UNICEF from operating in the northeast over claims it was training "spies" who were supporting Boko Haram - only to lift the ban later the same day after a meeting with the aid agency.
Northeast Nigeria has been ravaged by a decade-long civil war led by the armed group Boko Haram that has killed 30,000 people and forced two million to flee their homes.
The United Nations says 7.1 million people in the region need assistance in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Al Jazeera
The Nigerian aid workers, a woman and five men, were captured in July by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) during an ambush on their convoy close to the border with Niger.
"The armed group holding captive an employee of Action Against Hunger, two drivers and three health ministry personnel, have executed a hostage," the Paris-based charity said in a statement on Wednesday, without giving details of the identity of the victim.
"Action Against Hunger condemns in the strongest terms this assassination and urgently calls for the release of the hostages."
The charity said it was "extremely concerned and is fully mobilised to ensure that the remaining hostages can be quickly and safely reunited with their families".
ISWAP released a video following the abduction, showing a female charity member pleading for the release of the hostages, with her five male colleagues behind her.
The kidnapping was the latest to target aid workers in the conflict-hit region after the abduction and the killing of two women working for the International Committee of the Red Cross last year.
ISWAP is a splinter faction of Boko Haram that swore allegiance in 2016 to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It has repeatedly attacked military bases and targeted aid workers in northeast Nigeria.
Aid group suspends operations
International aid agency Mercy Corps said on Wednesday it suspended operations in two northeast Nigerian states worst-hit by the armed groups after the Nigerian army closed four of its offices in the region.
"Mercy Corps is suspending operations in Borno and Yobe states following the closure of four of our field offices by the Nigerian military," Amy Fairbairn, its head of media and communications, said in a statement.
"We have not yet received an official reason from the Nigerian authorities for the closure and we are seeking to work with them to resolve this as soon as possible," said Fairbairn, adding Mercy Corps' work in other parts of Nigeria would continue.
The Nigerian army has accused humanitarian organisations of working with armed groups.
In December 2018, it suspended UNICEF from operating in the northeast over claims it was training "spies" who were supporting Boko Haram - only to lift the ban later the same day after a meeting with the aid agency.
Northeast Nigeria has been ravaged by a decade-long civil war led by the armed group Boko Haram that has killed 30,000 people and forced two million to flee their homes.
The United Nations says 7.1 million people in the region need assistance in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Al Jazeera
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Nigeria going after privacy app Truecaller
Nigerian regulators are going after Truecaller, the Sweden-based phone number identification app, for “potential breach of privacy rights of Nigerians.”
Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency claims Truecaller’s privacy policy contains “illegitimate provisions” that contravene Nigeria’s Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). It also alleges Truecaller “collects far more information than it needs to provide its primary service” and has urged Nigerians to delist themselves from the service.
NITDA’s investigation into Truecaller follows several years of the app’s activity in Africa’s largest mobile market amid growing usage. The app’s caller ID service, which helps users identify names of callers with unsaved numbers, has garnered 2.9 million active users in Nigeria.
With Truecaller users granting it access to their contacts list among a range of other permissions, the Stockholm-headquartered has aggregated a database of contact details from millions of users raising questions about its methods. As such, when a Truecaller user receives a call from an unsaved number, the app can match that number with a name from its vast database. In exchange for free use, the app leverages its vast user base for mobile advertising.
Truecaller has grown rapidly in markets like India and now has over 150 million daily active users worldwide and a million premium users who pay for additional features. In India, the app has been popularly adopted for spotting and managing users’ high spate of spam callswhile in Nigeria a common use case sees Truecaller used to detect prospective fraudsters amid the country’s low-trust environment. Nigeria’s spam culture has also seen attempts by regulatory bodies to stop unsolicited promotional spam texts and calls from telecoms operators face hiccups.
Truecaller remains subject of controversy especially given the ethical question on how it pulls in the contact details of non-Truecaller users to its database. There are now guides online on how users can delist from Truecaller’s database.
Bigger questions
But NITDA’s investigation of Truecaller also raises troubling questions about Nigeria’s own nascent data privacy laws. While NITDA is a government agency established by law to implement and regulate information technology, the NDPR data protection regulations have not been passed as a bill through Nigeria’s national assembly.
“The regulation is secondary in that they didn’t do the real work of passing a bill through the National Assembly so that Nigeria can get a real data protection law with coordinated data protection mechanisms,” says Gbenga Sesan, a prominent digital rights advocate. “It’s tough to enforce secondary legislation because agencies, or even companies, will challenge it in court. For example, best practice expects that data protection laws or regulation be managed by a data protection agency which NITDA is not.”
As it turns out, a data protection bill which has been passed by Nigeria’s senate and submitted for presidential assent since May remains unsigned. It’s a reflection of wider realities across African countries many of which remain in need of stronger bills of data rights.
Perhaps as an indication of its limitations, Sesan says the application of NDPR as a stop-gap measure is not broad enough. “If serious, they should start with the Central Bank, the Independent National Electoral Commission, Nigerian Communications Commission, Nigerian Immigration Service and all other government agencies that collect and have lost or abused data,” Sesan says.
For its part, Truecaller says it’s reviewing NITDA’s comments and will prepare a response but ultimately, Sesan expects NITDA’s investigation to fizzle out. ”This is probably another press posturing that will go nowhere,” Sesan says. “The best this dog can do is bark, it has zero bite.”
By Yomi Kazeem
Quartz
Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency claims Truecaller’s privacy policy contains “illegitimate provisions” that contravene Nigeria’s Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). It also alleges Truecaller “collects far more information than it needs to provide its primary service” and has urged Nigerians to delist themselves from the service.
NITDA’s investigation into Truecaller follows several years of the app’s activity in Africa’s largest mobile market amid growing usage. The app’s caller ID service, which helps users identify names of callers with unsaved numbers, has garnered 2.9 million active users in Nigeria.
With Truecaller users granting it access to their contacts list among a range of other permissions, the Stockholm-headquartered has aggregated a database of contact details from millions of users raising questions about its methods. As such, when a Truecaller user receives a call from an unsaved number, the app can match that number with a name from its vast database. In exchange for free use, the app leverages its vast user base for mobile advertising.
Truecaller has grown rapidly in markets like India and now has over 150 million daily active users worldwide and a million premium users who pay for additional features. In India, the app has been popularly adopted for spotting and managing users’ high spate of spam callswhile in Nigeria a common use case sees Truecaller used to detect prospective fraudsters amid the country’s low-trust environment. Nigeria’s spam culture has also seen attempts by regulatory bodies to stop unsolicited promotional spam texts and calls from telecoms operators face hiccups.
Truecaller remains subject of controversy especially given the ethical question on how it pulls in the contact details of non-Truecaller users to its database. There are now guides online on how users can delist from Truecaller’s database.
Bigger questions
But NITDA’s investigation of Truecaller also raises troubling questions about Nigeria’s own nascent data privacy laws. While NITDA is a government agency established by law to implement and regulate information technology, the NDPR data protection regulations have not been passed as a bill through Nigeria’s national assembly.
“The regulation is secondary in that they didn’t do the real work of passing a bill through the National Assembly so that Nigeria can get a real data protection law with coordinated data protection mechanisms,” says Gbenga Sesan, a prominent digital rights advocate. “It’s tough to enforce secondary legislation because agencies, or even companies, will challenge it in court. For example, best practice expects that data protection laws or regulation be managed by a data protection agency which NITDA is not.”
As it turns out, a data protection bill which has been passed by Nigeria’s senate and submitted for presidential assent since May remains unsigned. It’s a reflection of wider realities across African countries many of which remain in need of stronger bills of data rights.
Perhaps as an indication of its limitations, Sesan says the application of NDPR as a stop-gap measure is not broad enough. “If serious, they should start with the Central Bank, the Independent National Electoral Commission, Nigerian Communications Commission, Nigerian Immigration Service and all other government agencies that collect and have lost or abused data,” Sesan says.
For its part, Truecaller says it’s reviewing NITDA’s comments and will prepare a response but ultimately, Sesan expects NITDA’s investigation to fizzle out. ”This is probably another press posturing that will go nowhere,” Sesan says. “The best this dog can do is bark, it has zero bite.”
By Yomi Kazeem
Quartz
The new mental illness approach in Nigeria
It was a most unusual consultation. Dr Ayo Ajeigbe received the patient at his private practice in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, in his customary welcoming manner.
But there was, it turned out, nothing wrong with the man. And when Ajeigbe asked why he was there, he simply replied: “I just wanted to see what a psychologist looked like.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. Mental health professionals are rare in Nigeria, as they are in many other developing nations. In Africa’s most populous nation – a country of more than 200 million people – there are an estimated 150 practising psychologists.
If mental health treatments are patchy, inadequate and underfunded in most western nations, they are practically nonexistent in the majority of lower- and middle-income countries – more than 100 countries worldwide. Here mental health provisions are the poorly resourced afterthought of health budgets that are in any case likely to be meagre.
So what is to be done? Ajeigbe decided that a partial answer lay in the voluntary sector. A year ago, he agreed to head up the Abuja section of Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (Mani), a burgeoning user-led organisation fast emerging as a multi-pronged solution to Nigeria’s mental health crisis.
Mani was launched in 2016 by Victor Ugo, a then medical student from Lagos who had suffered from depression, as a response to the lack of mental health support in Nigeria, where an estimated 7 million people have the same condition.
Ugo’s vision was to drive change by raising awareness and dispelling stigmas that exist around mental health issues in Nigeria. And on Wednesday, he will appear at the annual Goalkeepers event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, to make the case for more funding and fairer treatment for mental health.
“If you have depression,” says Latifah Yusuf Ojomo, the deputy head of Mani’s Lagos team, “people can cast you as mad, which means that the majority of people who have mental health issues in Nigeria do not understand, or want to accept what they are feeling.”
From the outset, Ugo decided that if Mani was to have any significant impact it would need to focus attention on the country’s most populous demographic. “Young people [in Nigeria] are much more open to learning new things,” explains Ugo, “they are much more focused on ways to change.”
Mani needed a “cool factor”, something Ugo says was sorely lacking in the mental health sector: “Symposiums, that was all that was happening with mental health in Nigeria, just more and more symposiums, people would give a lecture saying we need to increase awareness, but nothing was happening.”
Ugo and a small band of medical students took to social media, sharing stories and launching online campaigns. Then in October 2017 they hosted their first event, not a symposium as Ugo is keen to point out, but a food fair: “We just said come and you can taste different delicacies, play games and talk about mental health in a cool way.”
The event was a huge success, and evolved into a series of monthly workshops focused on topics such as depression and anxiety. As Mani continued to grow in numbers, these meet-ups became known as “conversation cafes”, held in restaurants, parks and cafes, and eventually spreading to cities all over Nigeria, including Abuja and Ibadan.
Each month, a different topic is selected – childhood trauma, the benefits of mindfulness, relationship strains, the reactionary attitudes of the “village” – a case study is presented and discussion groups form.
Two years later, Mani is now a leading voice on mental health issues in the country, with more than 1,500 volunteers and active in 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states. Ugo is still taken aback by what the project has achieved. “We didn’t know we were going to end up here; in fact, I feel like we have been a hundred times more successful than we expected at the start.”
Despite the initial success, Ugo knew that still more needed to be done. “We thought if we don’t balance this with some kind of help, we will cause more harm than good.” So, in 2017, Mani launched a 24-hour mental health support service to run alongside its awareness campaigns. The service allowed people to reach out over WhatsApp or Twitter for emergency help in the form of advice, counselling and supportive listening. An emergency response team was also created via a network of volunteer counsellors. Mani also launched a confidential 24-hour suicide hotline. Attempted suicide is a criminal offence in Nigeria, punishable by up to one year in prison.
Currently, only 3.3% of Nigeria’s total health budget goes towards mental health, which leaves the public system chronically understaffed. It also leaves Mani with a limited pool of professionals to recruit. As a solution to this, Mani launched a “train the trainer” system in which mental health professionals educate volunteers in subjects such as active assistance and safe talk (a programme that teaches participants to recognise and engage individuals who may be a suicide risk). Ajeigbe explains: “What we do is train people in fundamental mental health skills, so if I train 10 people, they can in turn reach 100 people.”
Mani’s volunteers come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Alle Ayodele, the head of the organisation’s Oyo state chapter, was studying microbiology when he decided to volunteer for Mani after coming across its support team on Twitter. He had been impressed by its speed and professionalism in responding to a series of suicide notes that were trending: “Mani took them really seriously, as soon as someone posted a note they stepped in.”
Ekene Okeke, from Lagos, has a background in sociology and criminology. After suffering from depression and connecting with Mani on Twitter, she decided to volunteer for it. Okeke was recently called out on an emergency where a woman had high levels of anxiety and had been alone for several days. “I dropped what I was doing, and spent hours talking with her, I even went and bought her ice-cream.” It’s moments like this, Okeke says, that make volunteering so rewarding: “In the end, the woman was able to calm down and has since reached out for help.”
Informal mental health support networks like this are becoming more prevalent around the world, as people realise that health systems cannot cope with mental illness, and that society will have to come up with other strategies. Examples include park bench psychotherapy in Zimbabwe, a peer-support initiative in Kenya, community-based self-help in Pakistan and the Phola organisation in South Africa.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, Mani has launched a training programme for schools. The programme will include a series of “mental health clubs” where students are taught about coping mechanisms, the effects of bullying and consent workshops. Mani also trains teachers and parents on children’s mental health, the latter a group that Ugo identifies as especially crucial. “Culturally, young people are not allowed to speak up,” explains Ugo, “you have to listen; respect is really crucial. If I need help, I ask my parents and they decide if I need help.”
When Mani’s WhatsApp service began in 2017 it immediately identified an issue. “Many more females seek help than men,” Ajeigbe explains, “this is because according to societal norms men are supposed to be emotionally strong.” About 85% of the initial calls were from women, so Ugo and his team researched how their service could appeal more to men. “We read that men are much better at using test-based services,” says Ugo, who immediately incorporated a test into the programme. This resulted in a 40% increase in men reaching out.
Recruitment of volunteers is one area where Mani does not need to worry – it currently has 500 applications waiting to be processed. “The good thing is that many people who talk to us end up volunteering for us,” says Ugo. More than 10,000 people have now spoken with Mani using its WhatsApp service.
The success of Mani may have exceeded Ugo’s initial expectations, but he is not one for complacency. He has now set his sights on persuading the government to change the national policy on mental health. He is also seeking a broader funding base, as 90% of the costs of the organisation are borne by the founders.
“At the moment we are still very much self-funded, Ugo says. “This is a big challenge, considering how much more impact we believe we can make, and the speed with which we are growing our network across Nigeria.”
Mani can be contacted at contact@mentallyaware.org and on +234 805 1493163
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
The Guardian
Related stories: Video - Nigerian woman tackles mental health stigma
Entrepreneur Emeka Offor wants to combat mental health crisis in Nigeria
In Northern Nigeria - man sent to mental institute for being atheist
But there was, it turned out, nothing wrong with the man. And when Ajeigbe asked why he was there, he simply replied: “I just wanted to see what a psychologist looked like.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. Mental health professionals are rare in Nigeria, as they are in many other developing nations. In Africa’s most populous nation – a country of more than 200 million people – there are an estimated 150 practising psychologists.
If mental health treatments are patchy, inadequate and underfunded in most western nations, they are practically nonexistent in the majority of lower- and middle-income countries – more than 100 countries worldwide. Here mental health provisions are the poorly resourced afterthought of health budgets that are in any case likely to be meagre.
So what is to be done? Ajeigbe decided that a partial answer lay in the voluntary sector. A year ago, he agreed to head up the Abuja section of Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (Mani), a burgeoning user-led organisation fast emerging as a multi-pronged solution to Nigeria’s mental health crisis.
Mani was launched in 2016 by Victor Ugo, a then medical student from Lagos who had suffered from depression, as a response to the lack of mental health support in Nigeria, where an estimated 7 million people have the same condition.
Ugo’s vision was to drive change by raising awareness and dispelling stigmas that exist around mental health issues in Nigeria. And on Wednesday, he will appear at the annual Goalkeepers event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, to make the case for more funding and fairer treatment for mental health.
“If you have depression,” says Latifah Yusuf Ojomo, the deputy head of Mani’s Lagos team, “people can cast you as mad, which means that the majority of people who have mental health issues in Nigeria do not understand, or want to accept what they are feeling.”
From the outset, Ugo decided that if Mani was to have any significant impact it would need to focus attention on the country’s most populous demographic. “Young people [in Nigeria] are much more open to learning new things,” explains Ugo, “they are much more focused on ways to change.”
Mani needed a “cool factor”, something Ugo says was sorely lacking in the mental health sector: “Symposiums, that was all that was happening with mental health in Nigeria, just more and more symposiums, people would give a lecture saying we need to increase awareness, but nothing was happening.”
Ugo and a small band of medical students took to social media, sharing stories and launching online campaigns. Then in October 2017 they hosted their first event, not a symposium as Ugo is keen to point out, but a food fair: “We just said come and you can taste different delicacies, play games and talk about mental health in a cool way.”
The event was a huge success, and evolved into a series of monthly workshops focused on topics such as depression and anxiety. As Mani continued to grow in numbers, these meet-ups became known as “conversation cafes”, held in restaurants, parks and cafes, and eventually spreading to cities all over Nigeria, including Abuja and Ibadan.
Each month, a different topic is selected – childhood trauma, the benefits of mindfulness, relationship strains, the reactionary attitudes of the “village” – a case study is presented and discussion groups form.
Two years later, Mani is now a leading voice on mental health issues in the country, with more than 1,500 volunteers and active in 13 of Nigeria’s 36 states. Ugo is still taken aback by what the project has achieved. “We didn’t know we were going to end up here; in fact, I feel like we have been a hundred times more successful than we expected at the start.”
Despite the initial success, Ugo knew that still more needed to be done. “We thought if we don’t balance this with some kind of help, we will cause more harm than good.” So, in 2017, Mani launched a 24-hour mental health support service to run alongside its awareness campaigns. The service allowed people to reach out over WhatsApp or Twitter for emergency help in the form of advice, counselling and supportive listening. An emergency response team was also created via a network of volunteer counsellors. Mani also launched a confidential 24-hour suicide hotline. Attempted suicide is a criminal offence in Nigeria, punishable by up to one year in prison.
Currently, only 3.3% of Nigeria’s total health budget goes towards mental health, which leaves the public system chronically understaffed. It also leaves Mani with a limited pool of professionals to recruit. As a solution to this, Mani launched a “train the trainer” system in which mental health professionals educate volunteers in subjects such as active assistance and safe talk (a programme that teaches participants to recognise and engage individuals who may be a suicide risk). Ajeigbe explains: “What we do is train people in fundamental mental health skills, so if I train 10 people, they can in turn reach 100 people.”
Mani’s volunteers come from a diverse range of backgrounds. Alle Ayodele, the head of the organisation’s Oyo state chapter, was studying microbiology when he decided to volunteer for Mani after coming across its support team on Twitter. He had been impressed by its speed and professionalism in responding to a series of suicide notes that were trending: “Mani took them really seriously, as soon as someone posted a note they stepped in.”
Ekene Okeke, from Lagos, has a background in sociology and criminology. After suffering from depression and connecting with Mani on Twitter, she decided to volunteer for it. Okeke was recently called out on an emergency where a woman had high levels of anxiety and had been alone for several days. “I dropped what I was doing, and spent hours talking with her, I even went and bought her ice-cream.” It’s moments like this, Okeke says, that make volunteering so rewarding: “In the end, the woman was able to calm down and has since reached out for help.”
Informal mental health support networks like this are becoming more prevalent around the world, as people realise that health systems cannot cope with mental illness, and that society will have to come up with other strategies. Examples include park bench psychotherapy in Zimbabwe, a peer-support initiative in Kenya, community-based self-help in Pakistan and the Phola organisation in South Africa.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, Mani has launched a training programme for schools. The programme will include a series of “mental health clubs” where students are taught about coping mechanisms, the effects of bullying and consent workshops. Mani also trains teachers and parents on children’s mental health, the latter a group that Ugo identifies as especially crucial. “Culturally, young people are not allowed to speak up,” explains Ugo, “you have to listen; respect is really crucial. If I need help, I ask my parents and they decide if I need help.”
When Mani’s WhatsApp service began in 2017 it immediately identified an issue. “Many more females seek help than men,” Ajeigbe explains, “this is because according to societal norms men are supposed to be emotionally strong.” About 85% of the initial calls were from women, so Ugo and his team researched how their service could appeal more to men. “We read that men are much better at using test-based services,” says Ugo, who immediately incorporated a test into the programme. This resulted in a 40% increase in men reaching out.
Recruitment of volunteers is one area where Mani does not need to worry – it currently has 500 applications waiting to be processed. “The good thing is that many people who talk to us end up volunteering for us,” says Ugo. More than 10,000 people have now spoken with Mani using its WhatsApp service.
The success of Mani may have exceeded Ugo’s initial expectations, but he is not one for complacency. He has now set his sights on persuading the government to change the national policy on mental health. He is also seeking a broader funding base, as 90% of the costs of the organisation are borne by the founders.
“At the moment we are still very much self-funded, Ugo says. “This is a big challenge, considering how much more impact we believe we can make, and the speed with which we are growing our network across Nigeria.”
Mani can be contacted at contact@mentallyaware.org and on +234 805 1493163
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
The Guardian
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