Nigeria’s Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a bill that would stop treating attempted suicide as a crime. The bill, sponsored by Cross River South senator Asuquo Ekpenyong, passed second reading by voice vote and was referred to the Senate committees on health and on judiciary, human rights and legal matters for further work.
The case for the bill is a contradiction in Nigerian law. Section 327 of the Criminal Code and Section 231 of the Penal Code each provide up to a year of imprisonment for attempting to take one’s own life, while the National Mental Health Act of 2021 recognises attempted suicide as a psychiatric emergency requiring intervention. Ekpenyong argued that criminalisation discourages people from seeking help, pushes families to conceal attempts, deters health workers from reporting cases and deepens stigma, weakening the data any prevention programme would need. Senators who are medical doctors supported the medical framing in debate, noting that depression and other conditions can impair judgement and that some survivors have later died by suicide in detention.
The opposition came from the chair. Senate President Godswill Akpabio argued that attempted suicide should remain punishable, warning that removing penalties could encourage the act, and called for state Houses of Assembly to give their views at the public hearing stage. Senate leader Opeyemi Bamidele separately cautioned that parts of federal criminal justice law do not automatically apply across all states, so the bill’s national reach needs to be established before it proceeds.
The outcome is a live bill with an openly hostile presiding officer, which makes the committee stage and any public hearing the real test. Status: passed second reading; committee review pending; existing criminal provisions remain in force.