Okutepa To Senate: Rehabilitation, Not Prison, Is The Right Response To Attempted Suicide
By Sunday Etuka
Prominent lawyer, Jibrin Okutepa SAN, has challenged the idea that Nigerians who attempt suicide should be prosecuted and jailed, urging the National Assembly to replace punishment with treatment, counselling and support.
Okutepa said he respectfully disagreed with any suggestion by the President of the Senate that such persons should necessarily face prosecution and imprisonment.
He argued, in a post on his X handle on Wednesday, that this approach ignores the psychological, emotional, economic and social pressures that can push a person to the point of contemplating suicide.
While stressing that no one should be encouraged to end their life and that life is sacred, he said a clear line must be drawn between deliberate criminal conduct and the desperate acts of people overwhelmed by circumstances they can no longer bear.
Depression, severe economic hardship, family breakdown, trauma, social rejection and hopelessness, he noted, are among the factors that may be at play.
Such individuals, he said, need compassion, professional counselling, medical care, rehabilitation and renewed hope rather than the cold walls of a prison.
Questioning the logic of jailing someone who already believes life is no longer worth living, Okutepa asked whether imprisonment could restore hope or address the roots of despair.
He warned that the humiliation, stigma and isolation of incarceration could deepen the very wounds that led to the attempt.
A humane justice system, he said, should seek to understand the causes of conduct, prevent its recurrence and restore dignity, not merely punish.
He maintained that the state’s duty to protect life extends beyond criminal law. It must also create conditions in which citizens can live with dignity, access mental healthcare, receive meaningful social support and find hope in their darkest moments.
When someone attempts suicide, he said, the state’s first response should be to save the life, assess the person’s circumstances, provide treatment and support recovery, rather than treat prosecution as automatic.
In some cases, he added, compassion achieves more than punishment, and rehabilitation serves society better than incarceration.
Okutepa called on lawmakers to adopt a more humane, evidence-informed and rehabilitative approach.
He urged them to strengthen mental health services, set up accessible counselling and crisis intervention centres, and remove the stigma that keeps vulnerable people from seeking help.
“A nation is judged not only by how severely it punishes wrongdoing, but also by how compassionately it treats its most vulnerable citizens,” he said, expressing hope for a Nigeria where emotional distress is met with understanding rather than condemnation.
In his view, the first question after an attempted suicide should not be what punishment the person deserves, but what suffering brought them to that point and how to ensure they never return to it.
That, he concluded, is the true meaning of justice tempered with humanity.
