THE REAL MAD PEOPLE: NOW ENDANGERED PEOPLE
Dr odofin James Taiye
Who will warn the real mad people in the our streets that
they are now at risk of being lynched at
the slightest provocation? Will they even understand your message in clear
terms? Who would explain to them in their ‘language’ that the host community
they roamed freely before is now hostile, and suspicious of their anti-social
behaviours? All these are difficult since our public is not well educated in
the concept of mental ill-health.
It is definitely a hard time for the real mentally disordered
people roaming our streets nowadays. They are now endangered ‘species’
considering the onslaught being meted out to them in the streets. The mentally
sick and the normal people are now at risk in the streets. Unfortunately, the
former, cannot be warned to stay off the streets.
The discovery of Soka Forest in Ibadan, Oyo State, South-West
Nigeria, a few months back, had
drastically changed people’s perception to the detriment of the mentally sick
in the streets. The Forest was alleged to be the den of money ritualists. What
used to be the mad man characteristics are now be mis interpreted with every
suspicion. They are now being seen as evil on the prowl with pretence to
inflict harm on the unsuspecting members of the society when the opportunity
comes. Worst still, they are now be ‘re-branded’ as potential ritualists(dealing in human body parts) in
disguise or as middle-men for them(ritualists).
In as much as people can disguise to be anything or anyone
to achieve their devilish aims, we should be logical in our analysis of
situation and not to be clouded by sentiment, bitterness, hatred, vengeance or
deformed information to arrive at our conclusion and judgement.I will be quick
to add that I am not holding brief for the pretentious mad people who put on
such ‘show’ to deceive, destroy, defraud or even kill the members of the public
for whatever reason.
The human mental state is a spectrum which ranges between being normally acceptable to
abnormally unacceptable and despicable anti-social behavior. The community
itself understands the latter and as such classifies those people as being mad.
The mentally sick person can suffer from delusion, illusion, or hallucination, hence,
any of these will therefore influence his/her anti-social behavior, or its
extent. He/she can then talk or act irrationally or being paranoia .This may
include direct attack on an innocent member of the public, getting hold of some
property or a person, or even saying
something which seems so logically correct but so untrue!
The ‘small world’ of
the authentic mentally sick people seems to be compromised by the invasion of
counterfeit mad people. This kind of infiltration is possible in every sphere
of life, anyway. The fake mad people have therefore made the perception of the
public to be full of unnecessary suspicion and distortion of facts. It has also
made the members of the public to be hypercritical and unsympathetic toward the
real ones. I am not in support of maiming, kidnapping, killing, or connivance allegedly
being perpetuated by either, but we should be fair in our action to a suspect. Without
fairness, there is no justice.If there is any iota of suspicion as regards the authencity
or otherwise of the mental ill-health of a suspect, police should alerted and
this claim can be investigated. The police should be diligent in this, and be
seen to be. This will make people to have faith in the institution. I commended
the police when I heard that a man was docked for pouring fuel(about to be set
ablaze on fire)on a suspected thief.
In case of alleged criminal act, the law should be allowed
to take its course. This will involve handing of the suspect over to the law
enforcement agent for indepth investigation, and for psychiatric evalution of
the mental status. The public should therefore not mete out jungle justice
however tempting it is. This is inhuman,
unjust and criminal, and does not expose the real perpetrators.
The government should also do well by keeping our streets
free of these unfortunate set of people who seem to be oblivion of their state,
action and environment. They should be taken to a government asylum for care
and adequate treatment. This will also improve the aesthetic value of our
streets.
People should also calm their frayed nerves and think
logically with these sets of people who are in the realm of illogicality. They
should be understood from their own platform, so as to be fair in our
assessment. The public should be their advocate and not their executioner. They
should rather be helped.Any community found to have meted out jungle justice should
be made to face the full wrath of the law.
We should therefore, collectively put our efforts to prevent such
barbaric act in our society. If it does happen,the landlord community
association, the traditional ruler, local government chairman, security agents,
Youth organization in the area etc should individually or collective be held
responsible.
No one is capable of dishing out jungle justice to any
fellow man. This trend should be stopped before it becomes the order of the
day. If not checked, a normally behaved person can be labeled a ‘pretentious
mad person waiting to kidnap. A grand mother was almost lynched when found with
her daughter’s day old grand child on her way home from the hospital where the
child was born, and the mother was in poor state of health to perform any
nursing care.
The mentally sick are human beings.It is just that life has
not been fair to them. They would rather not want that state for themselves if
they had choice. They are even exposed to other risks if not more than the
general mentally normal population. These include being victims of
neglect,rape,hit-and-run traffic accident, objects of sacrifice or ritual killing, or patients of
chronic untreated diseases and sudden death.All hands must be on deck to stop
this trend of jungle justice.
Dr odofin James Taiye,a
medical practitioner in Lagos State wrote this article.He welcomes
comments,contributions,critiques etc.
Comments