Dr. Allwell Orji, the Nigerian man who jumped off the Third Mainland Bridge last Sunday reportedly had attempted suicide multiple times.
Sources close to the family of the doctor have anonymously revealed to The Sun, the young doctor’s battles, one of which includes an attempt to jump down from the 2nd floor of their family home at Odunukan Street, Ebute-Ejigbo, off Morroco Road, near University of Lagos, and how his family were intensely protective of him until his death on March 19.
Here’s what the source said:
“Four years ago he attempted to kill himself and, thereafter, had tried doing so on a number of times. Since then, his family had been monitoring him. We don’t know the kind of sickness he was suffering from, but we knew he was being monitored. That was why he was assigned a driver to take him around.
“He was such a gentle boy, who never made any trouble. His family has lived on this street for long; his father died four years ago. Perhaps the driver who drove him didn’t know about his condition because he was engaged about three months ago.”
Ever since the 35-year-old jumped into the Lagos lagoon, there has been an increase in the conversation around mental illness and how to help people dealing with such health conditions.
However, speaking with the press, a Consultant Surgeon, Dr. Emmanuel Enabulele, claimed that “depression is not enough to make a doctor commit suicide.”
Here’s what Enabulele said of the late Orji:
“He was coming from church, with no family members, then a phone call, he pulled up, came out of car, then plunged into the lagoon to end his life. A classical case of depression does not present that way. In suicide tendencies, people will see it coming before it occurs, but this one is so sudden, acute.
These days, doctors are involved in other businesses other than medicine because of the recession. Maybe, he went to church to pray, got a call that things did not work out, he cracked and committed suicide.
If you talk of manic depressive psychosis, usually, it is a build-up, with mood swings, lack of interest in the environment, lack of appetite, etc. It is not something that happens suddenly, then a plunge into a river. In fact, if it is the classical type, a person like that should not be allowed to go to church alone.
Which kind of church did he go to? Was it ‘white garment’ church? That could give a clue to what was pursuing him. We have to know where he worked, his age. Why didn’t he go to church with his family? If we say mental depression, this is not the pattern. Was he sick? Even if he was nursing any sickness, taking his life wouldn’t have been that dramatic.
There could be other things involved, we need more information. A doctor is a human being, he could get involved in crime, he could be depressed, he could be blackmailed, so we need more information about the doctor and his last days before the suicide. However, the easiest thing to suspect is acute depression.”
