Rev. Fr. George Ehusani, Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation has described Nigerians as “distressed, wounded, and hurting victims” subsequent to the growing incidences of physical, psychological and emotional violence over the years that have taken serious toll on them. He expressed this concern recently at the 2022 National Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Association of Industrial and Organisational Psychologists (NAIOP) while delivering his paper entitled, “The Imperative of Psycho-Trauma Awareness and Psycho-Trauma Healing, for Personal, Organisational and Societal Wellbeing,” in Abuja. According to him, all Nigerians are suffering from various degrees of trauma. He said, “Indeed, all of us are often unaware and undiagnosed victims of varying degrees of what has been described as “Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder” (OPSD)! We are distressed, wounded, and hurting victims of our national ruination that has been superintended over the years by a succession of punitive overlord who themselves are victims of the endless cycle of physical, psychological, and emotional violence that the Nigerian population has been through. No wonder we witness such a high degree of the phenomenon known as re-victimisation or retraumatisation.”
The social commentator also noted that a major part of the 62 years of Nigeria’s independence, has been characterized by suffering, pain, distress, and outrightly traumatising experiences for individuals, families, and communities. Fr. Ehusani stated, “No wonder we hear the expression these days, that “Nigeria has happened to him!” or “Nigeria has happened to her!” To pick up our history of trauma from post-independence times, is not to ignore the brutal and ignominious legacy of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Sahara slave trade, which lasted for over four hundred years, and was sustained by the greed, the wickedness, and the callousness of our local leaders, (the Chiefs, Obas, Obis, and the Sarkis), who conspired with the unscrupulous foreign merchants to prosecute the reprehensible trade in human cargo, until the Whiteman changed his method of exploitation from slave trade and slave labour in the Americas, to colonialism, and then compelled our autochthonous conquerors to toe the line.” He illustrated the series of traumatic experiences of Nigerians cum the individual and corporate psyche of multiple generations of Nigerians. “We are all bearing and having to struggle with one or more forms of trauma stress that the Nigerian state is constantly unleashing on its citizens: The 3-year-old toddler, who is vicariously bearing the trauma of the parents that have just been ejected from their slum settlement in Abuja and rendered homeless; the 5 year old girl, kidnapped along with other children from an Islamiyya school in Niger State; the 10 year old street kid in Gusau, who has never been enrolled in school, and is already learning the art of banditry; the 15 year old girl forcefully abducted and married out (against her will) to a terrorist kingpin in Maiduguri.
“The 20 year old student in Kaduna who is yet to complete his 200 level studies, after four calendar years in the university; the 35 years old State House of Assembly member in Lokoja, Kogi State, whose life is in danger, for daring to identify with the opposition party; the 40 year old market woman in Yenagoa whose house and shop were completely swept away recently by the flood, but who has not received any help from any government agency; the 50 year old Senator in Abuja, who recently received intelligence reports that he is being trailed around town by “unknown gunmen. “The 55 year old State Governor whose mother-in-law was kidnapped by bandits, and is yet to be released; the 63 year old professor of mathematics, who receives less than USD600 a month salary, and who today has been denied eight months salary, for daring to join the ASUU strike to compel the federal government to implement the agreement it signed with the Union since the year 2009. “The 66 year old former Deputy Senate President who has been languishing in a U.K. detention facility for most of the year, with Nigerian leaders simply moving on, as if he were a common criminal; and the 78 year old president of the federal republic, whose wife has come out to publicly confess that he is an untreated patient of PTSD.” He shared the public confession of Madam Aisha Buhari, the President’s wife, which attested to the fact that her husband suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that his chronic trauma condition was neither acknowledged, nor formally diagnosed and treated.
“But she said she had to bear the brunt of it all,” Fr. Ehusani narrated. He quoted her in toto. “She says, and I quote: “My husband served the Nigerian Army for 27 years before he was overthrown in a coup d’état. He fought the civil war for 30 months without rehabilitation; he ruled Nigeria for 20 months and was detained for 40 months without disclosing the nature of his offence… You can imagine myself at the age of 19 years, handling somebody that went to war, suffered a coup d’état, then lost several elections, and finally getting to the Villa in 2015… So, at the age of 19, I had to figure out how to tell somebody of his calibre that he was wrong or right, and that was the beginning of my offence in his house, and contesting elections in 2003 and failed, 2007, failed, and 2011, the same thing – all without rehabilitation. I became a psychotherapist!”
