Much have been written on bullying and its criminal effects on society in general, but without any appreciable and constructive understanding of many areas of loopholes which (in our quest for solutions) have been left uncovered, leaving the larger society , particularly youth worse for it .
This wide gap is what my stay at Imodoye Residency Enclave , Ilorin has in recent times been addressing .
Based on the proposal I submitted concerning my plan to unravel this short sightedness, I was selected as a Writer-In-Residence , having submitted a new book work plan in which I am evidently assigning value to my collective experience on the mental illness of my son, Emmanuel , who has gone through five different hospitals for treatment in the past three years ( 2019-2022 )
As a veteran journalist and author , coupled with my brief stint at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching hospital, Zaria, where I worked as media consultant/ Editorial to its bi-annual magazine publications, it occurs to me , by credible insight
that, I may be fooling myself ( and ofcourse injuring my boy further) if I fail to come out openly on my discoveries ( either in fiction or non fiction genres) on what I perceive as the blind spot which bullying as an
" unintentional " hurting, has caused Emmanuel right from his childhood.
Though unintended, the (sacrilegious ) evil consequences of Emmanuel passing through certain religious bigotry , which amount to bullying, have affected his mentality and those of other innocent children while this sad development deserve to be studied with the likelihood of bringing a positively social and religious change .
This becomes even more pertinent and vital in a society like Nigeria where
an average of 50 million people suffer from mental illness ( with one out of four Nigerians accounting statistically as insane) even in a country in which less than ten percent of its population is having access to professional ( mental) assistance while government's annual budget devoted less than three percent to mental health.
In fact, hell could not have found a nearer haven of a bedlam than Nigeria where this has persisted for too long .
And does it not by itself amount to delusion of lunacy on our part as Nigerians generally, amid the usual daily headline news reporting cases of top public office holders , ( allegedly for fear of life after office ) looting public treasury as they cart away billions of Naira where staggering poverty is nakedly staring majority of Nigerians in the face ?
Little wonder why the former Secretary General of World Health Organisation W.H.O. Professor Adeoye Lambo did recommend sometimes that politicians aspiring to contest either as a Governor or a President of Nigeria should first of all be subjected to mental test towards determining his state of health for obvious reason.
EMMANUEL AS A CASE STUDY .
During a psycho therapy session which Dr. Ajayi of Osogbo Central hospital Osogbo had with Emmanuel, I learned to my rude shock that my son began smoking Indian hemp as a secondary school student, having been recruited as a choreographer by someone whom he referred to as " leader ". He was used to leading him along with other teenagers to churches to entertain their congregations with dancing acrobatics.
This is nothing but bullying in which innocent creatures are psychologically subjected to repetitive and hurtful acts by a superior power .
The view of Dr. Oyewole of Balm of Gilead Specialist hospital, Osogbo in 2019 that Emmanuel is a victim of parental pampering ( among others) has also not ceased to echo both in my consciousness and in my conscience where it reverberates consistently.
I suspect that we may have gone wrong where we, as his parents and members of Aladura church addressed him as Dada, the Nazirite whose heavy dreadlocks at birth , almost placed him on an oracular platform in which we ( like other parents of Dadas ) exhibited zeal without knowledge as we didn't march the moral and spiritual discipline that ought to go rigidly along with the training of children whom the bible referred to as Nazirites.
This is nothing but bullying even though it was not intended.
It was owing to his reckless passion for choreography that made him abscond from home for three years , and when at last he surfaced, he had ended up becoming a victim of another brand of bullying from those with whom he worked as stylists, even as his immediate boss allegedly abused him sexually.
His trouble took another dimension when upon mentioning this heinous activities to police during an unrelated case brought against his master , hell was let loose as he was harassed and brutalised by those who were recruited by his master to bullying him to a standstill.
Just few years ago, he revealed this story to me following my persistent enquiries on why he was increasingly shuttling from one salon to another, while he came up with the excuse that some boys with whom he had rough deals at Ibadan were already at Osogbo, monitoring him and that he wanted to avoid them.
I became more worried when he told me that he had already on his own volition,narrated his ordeal in a confession statement to a charismatic church in Osogbo some years back.
I became more worried for the fact that the church authorities could not , as and when he made the confession, take we his parents into confidence over how both of us could jointly manage him spiritually and mentally .
There is no doubt that all of these factors may have culminated in his further embrace of Indian hemp smoking to either cover his tracks psychologically or as a way of regaining lost confidence while ending up with mental illness.
The worst effect which his problem is causing me is that the intermittent relapses of his mental illness have been robbing me of peace of mind vital to authorship while the attendant interruptions on my studies have stalled three biography projects which I was commissioned to write .
His insistence that he is not at all sick and that he would not take his drugs if discharged from hospital have not helped matters as this stance has been the source of the relapsement of his illness.
The sole objective of my new book on bullying is primarily to raise an endowment through the launching and sales of the both online and offline.
it is my intention to use the proceeds raised there-from to register a faith-based governmental organisation which would crusade against drug abuse ,sensitize religious leaders on the danger of the new form of bullying while empowering them with the right knowledge .
The writer-friendly and enabling environment which Imodoye Residency Enclave programme has afforded me in the past one month has no doubt provided me great opportunity to prepare my manuscript .
The other production processes which include type setting, designing and publishing as well as corresponding to prospective launchers towards planning programmes for the launching would entail operating undisturbed under a conducive environment while accessing financial grants to accomplish the task .
The tragedies which his mental distress has caused us, his parents and family members have come to us in manifold dimensions.
* We have been the direct victims of his verbal and physical assaults and the trauma that go by this is better imagined than experienced.
* Needless to say here that the huge financial burdens ( about two million naira)which his medical treatment has caused us in the past three years have led us, his parents to seek financial assistance from friends and other well-wishers while we are on the verge of selling our properties to meet up with bills accruing from his treatment, welfare and travels ( often accompanied by police escorts) from one hospital to another.
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