A 200 Level Mass Communication student of the University of Ilorin, with a first class grade, died by suicide in the first week of February. He left a suicide note that explained his decision. Gruesome economic hardship and poverty drove him to take this tragic step. According to loved ones, he struggled with taking care of his widowed mother, raise school fees and money for his personal upkeep while attending classes. This unfortunate development reveals a pandemic of declining mental health and rising suicide rates, worsened by the deteriorating living conditions of millions of people worldwide, resulting from capitalist development.
A World Health Organization (WHO) study estimates that the suicide rate in Nigeria is 17.3, per 100,000. This is against the global suicide rate of 10.3 per 100,000, and in Nigeria that suicides used to be rare many years ago. This current situation puts Nigeria at the high end, especially among young people aged between 15 and 29 years old.
Suicidal Ideation and self-harm is more prevalent among university undergraduates in Nigeria and other low-income countries compared with high-income countries according to a study published in the Middle East Current Psychiatry. A report on the Daily Trust revealed that about eight university students in Nigeria committed suicide within the first six months of 2024. Enough as this is, there is a likelihood of the situation being worse. The data would not reflect the prevalence of suicide in Nigeria and Africa at large due to superstitions, social stigma and the lack of state capacity to effectively collect data. This remains a barrier to fully grasping the extent of the problem.
The Nigerian education system emphasises academic excellence but provides students with almost no material or social support to achieve it. In addition, social pressures stemming from the belief that tertiary education is the only chance (however slim) to escape poverty leads to feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness when a student in tertiary school faces economic or academic obstacles to attain a degree or diploma.
The tragic case of Ephraim Imahodor, a 300-Level student of the University of Benin, is an example where the trigger was an academic challenge. Ephraim committed suicide in 2019 because he was performing poorly academically. The Vanguard reports that he had been advised by the school authorities to withdraw. No counsellorship was provided. No inquiries were made by the authorities as to the reason for his poor performance. He was simply told to leave.
Beyond the lack of care and counsellorship for students to safeguard their social and mental wellbeing, a major contributor to the problem is the ever-increasing commodification of education. Universities fees have continuously increased in Nigeria with governments allocating a measly 5%-7% of their annual budget to the federal ministry of education in recent years. This is far below UNESCO recommended international benchmark of between 15% and 20%. The government has under-funded the sector with the consequence of reducing the quality of education delivery, while encouraging the federal universities and schools to increase ancillary fees to the point that tertiary education becomes unaffordable for the vast majority of Nigerians from working-class, peasants and urban poor people’s homes. The state governments’ universities are even worse, charging both tuition and even higher ancillary fees.
This has been the pattern of neoliberal austerity programs implemented since the 1980s, with successive governments expanding deregulation, sale of government assets and companies, increases in government services, removal of subsidies and underfunding of education and healthcare. In the Education sector in particular, increases in tuition fee have not been without resistance from the student movement, including some of their union bodies. However, the school and political authorities responded with heavy suppression.
Take the University of Benin, for example. The school fee for the 2016/2017 session was about N15,000. An attempt by the students’ union to protest a 300% increase to N45,000 aimed at incoming students for the subsequent session saw student protesters scattered by police. The school authorities rusticated five student union leaders and suspended the union.
However, in 2021, a measure to impose N20,000 late payment fine for the students was very quickly reversed after massive student protests blockaded the Vice Chancellor’s official residence and the main entrance to the campus for 3 consecutive days prompting the VC to personally address the protesters. A similar proposal in 2023 to increase fees by 100% for returning students was reversed after protests while increments were made for the new students.
The school authorities have seemed to settle for the strategy of progressively increasing fees for incoming students before their integration into the students’ union system. By the time of writing this article , the 2024/25 session school fees ranged from N65,000 to N120,000 for returning and new students representing a 400% to 800% increase in less than 10 years. This is the same story for federal tertiary education institutions across the country. The increases are even more dramatic for state schools and private institutions.
The threat of further commodification and fee increases loom large with the current administration’s exacerbation of neoliberal policies. The proposals by sections of the ruling class to privatise or turn the public schools into profit driven organisations, the rollout of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, a credit scheme meant for struggling students, are pointers to this. Proponents of privatisation have argued that, while tuition would increase, it would improve the standard of education and reduce incessant strike action by lecturers and other education sector staff. Flowing from this position, the student loan scheme is supposed to help students who can meet the steep conditions of accessing the loans, to pay for the astronomical costs of education. However, one only has to take a cursory look at government and private sector workers to see which class the people who usually get good jobs, with job security and higher remuneration after school, come from.
Also, a casual glance at the history of privatisation in Nigeria shows it has not led to improvement in the delivery of services quantity or quality wise. Increases in service charges do not lead to improved services. A typical example is the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). The skyrocketing of electricity tariffs, which we can scarcely afford, has not led to any improvement in power supply for the majority of Nigerians. In addition, importing an American-style student loan scheme that has been proven to saddle individuals with debt burden for long periods, especially as Nigeria has youth and total unemployment rates at over 53% and 33% respectively would be catastrophic. The loans fund should rather be utilised as public investments in expanding education access.
Neoliberal capitalism has been the defining dynamic of the Nigerian political economy, since the introduction of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. In seeking to maximise short-term profitability, the international and local capitalist class has imposed severe austerity. The Nigerian state has under-invested in education, including student social and material welfare. It has under-invested in efforts to reduce and eliminate poverty and unemployment in society. It has under-invested in mental health support services.
The ruling classes have proven themselves both unwilling and incapable of ensuring economic and social development, preferring instead to maintain the status quo of profit extraction from primary industries. Thus, working-class people are suffering. The current situation forces young people to confront a hopeless future. Opportunities are scarce and the vast majority of the population are too poor to access them.
The only way out of this hopeless situation is for the working people and youth to unite and fight. We must rise to our historical responsibility of waging a tireless revolutionary struggle to overthrow the ruling capitalist class and their exploitative system that undermines everything good, including our mental health. To build hope for students today, and the future generation, we must change the system that creates hopelessness for us.
As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out over a century ago, the choices before us are those of socialism or barbarism.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI
