FG Moves To Decriminalise Attempted Suicide As Colonial-Era Law Faces Repeal

Nigeria has taken its clearest step yet towards treating attempted suicide as a health emergency rather than a crime, with the Federal Executive Council approving an amendment to the National Mental Health Act that would end more than a century of colonial-era punishment for people in psychological distress.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, announced the decision on Wednesday while briefing State House correspondents after the FEC meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu in Abuja. He said the amendment would be transmitted to the National Assembly as an executive Bill for legislative consideration and enactment.

The proposed change targets two provisions that have criminalised attempted suicide for decades. Section 327 of the Criminal Code Act applies across southern Nigeria, and Section 231 of the Penal Code operates in the north, treating people in severe psychological distress as offenders rather than patients. Under both, a person who survives a suicide attempt can be prosecuted and jailed for up to one year, while Lagos State, by contrast, already treats such cases as a minor offence requiring hospitalisation under Section 235 of its Criminal Law.

Pate framed the reform as a change of philosophy, likening the present approach to punishing a person for being ill. He said the objective was to move from criminalisation to care and support, and that the Federal Government was targeting a 15 per cent reduction in suicide cases by 2030.

The scale of the problem is significant. Citing World Health Organisation estimates, Pate said suicide accounts for more than 7,000 deaths in Nigeria every year, with about 300,000 attempts recorded across the country annually. The WHO has separately estimated that roughly one in four Nigerians, close to 50 million people, live with a mental health condition, against a historically thin supply of care. For much of the past decade the country had fewer than 300 psychiatrists, a shortfall measured against a population that has since grown well beyond 150 million.

The move also closes a gap that advocates have flagged since Nigeria’s last major reform. President Muhammadu Buhari signed the National Mental Health Act 2021 into law on 5 January 2023, repealing the Lunacy Act of 1958, whose origins lay in a 1916 colonial ordinance that described people with mental illness in dehumanising terms and authorised their detention. That Act, the first substantive mental health law since independence, introduced patient rights, supportive care and a dedicated department within the Federal Ministry of Health.

It did not, however, touch the criminal statutes. The 2021 Act classified attempted suicide as a psychiatric emergency and permitted involuntary admission, but left Sections 327 and 231 intact, keeping Nigeria among the small group of countries that still criminalise self-harm. Wednesday’s approval is intended to resolve that contradiction directly.

Pate said the amendment followed consultations among the Ministries of Health and Social Welfare and Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, mental health advocates and the National Assembly, with a task force set up after a resolution of the House of Representatives. It aligns with existing federal frameworks, including the National Mental Health Policy 2022 to 2027 and the National Suicide Prevention Strategic Framework 2023 to 2030.

The demand for change is not new. A bill to repeal the Lunacy Act and establish a modern mental health law was first proposed in the Senate in 2003 but stalled for nearly two decades before the 2021 Act finally passed. Advocates have long argued that criminalisation discourages people in crisis from seeking help, a factor that also drives the true scale of self-harm underground, since many cases go unreported for fear of arrest.

Important steps remain before the reform becomes law. An executive Bill still requires passage by the National Assembly before it can take effect, and no timeline has been announced. Questions of implementation also persist, particularly funding, the supply of trained personnel and the creation of mental health units at state level, all identified by researchers as weak points of the 2021 Act.

At the same meeting, the FEC approved the National Centre for Oral Health Establishment Bill 2026 for transmission to the National Assembly, as part of a wider set of health sector measures.