The Nigeria Mental Health Act is one of the most important and long-overdue pieces of legislation in recent Nigerian history.
Imagine a child survives a suicide attempt after being kidnapped in Kogi State. Instead of receiving therapy and compassion, she is met with stigma, her wounds left unhealed, and her suffering treated like a crime. This heart-breaking reality mirrors the experiences of many Nigerians who are victims of kidnappings that rarely make the headlines and who return home carrying an invisible trauma, yet find no support to help them recover.
In May 2026, Nigerians woke up to disturbing reports from Oyo State. The attack, which occurred on May 16, saw armed assailants invade the Ahoro-Esiele/Yawota axis of Ogbomoso and abduct pupils, students and teachers from Community Grammar School, Baptist Nursery and Primary School, and L.A. Primary School. One teacher was later killed in captivity, while rescue efforts were complicated by explosives planted by the kidnappers. The incident triggered protests, school closures, and nationwide outrage. It left dozens of families living through every parent’s nightmare.
The questions now are:
When these children eventually return home, and we pray they all do, what happens next? Who helps the child who wakes up screaming from nightmares? Who helps the teacher who now fears entering a classroom? Who helps the parents who spent weeks wondering whether their children would ever come home alive?
These questions sit at the centre of one of Nigeria’s most overlooked public health challenges: mental health. Across Nigeria, victims of kidnapping, terrorism, communal violence, displacement, and economic hardship are carrying invisible wounds. Fear, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, grief, and emotional exhaustion often remain long after the immediate danger has passed. Mental health is no longer a niche issue. It has become part of everyday Nigerian life.
Also Read: The Startling Truth Nigeria Must Face: Mental Health After The Yelewata And Daudu Slaughter
Nigeria Is Fighting More Than Kidnappers
Every day, Nigerians navigate pressures that would test even the strongest minds. Families worry about insecurity. Young people struggle with unemployment. Communities affected by violence attempt to rebuild their lives. Parents fear for their children’s safety. Many citizens live under constant economic pressure as inflation continues to erode household incomes.
While these challenges affect people differently, they share one common consequence: they take a toll on mental wellbeing. The World Health Organization describes mental health as a state of wellbeing that enables people to cope with life’s stresses, work productively, and contribute to their communities. By that definition, the conversation about mental health is not only about hospitals or psychiatric diagnoses. It is about how Nigerians survive and recover from the pressures of everyday life.
From Colonial Custody to Modern Care
To understand why reform became necessary, we must briefly look at history.
Nigeria’s mental health legislation dates back to the colonial era. In 1916, the British administration enacted the Lunacy Ordinance, heavily influenced by the English Lunacy Act of 1890. The law focused largely on public order rather than treatment. People with mental health conditions were often viewed as individuals who needed to be confined rather than cared for.
Magistrates and medical officers held broad powers to confine individuals suspected of mental illness in asylums without their consent. These institutions functioned largely as detention centres. Patients could remain confined indefinitely, often with little hope of review, rehabilitation, or protection from abuse.
Following independence, the Lunacy Ordinance was renamed the Lunacy Act in 1958 and later consolidated as the Lunacy Act Cap 524 of the Laws of Nigeria 1964. For nearly sixty years, Nigeria continued operating under legislation that used terms such as “lunatic,” “idiot,” and “insane person.” The language reflected an era when mental illness was poorly understood and heavily stigmatised. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was moving toward rights-based mental healthcare. Nigeria was falling behind.
The Twenty-Year Fight to Change a Colonial-Era Act
Beginning in 2003, lawmakers and mental health professionals repeatedly introduced Mental Health Bills before the National Assembly. The first major attempt came when Senators Ibiabuye Martyns-Yellowe and Dalhatu Tafida introduced a bill that passed its first reading but was derailed by political delays and the death of one of its sponsors.
Subsequent attempts in the 6th, 7th, and 8th National Assemblies similarly failed to secure final passage. Some bills stalled. Others expired before passage. Several never progressed beyond committee stages. Yet advocates continued pushing. For two decades, psychiatrists, civil society groups, legal scholars, and policymakers argued that Nigeria deserved a modern mental health framework.
Their persistence eventually paid off. On 5 January 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the National Mental Health Bill into law when Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe sponsored the Mental and Substance Abuse Bill through the 9th National Assembly. For many mental health advocates, it was a historic victory.
What Makes the Nigeria Mental Health Act Different?
The Nigeria Mental Health Act represents a significant shift in how the country approaches mental healthcare. Instead of treating people as problems to be managed, the Act recognises them as individuals with rights and dignity.
Rather than focusing on confinement, the Act prioritises treatment, rehabilitation, dignity, and human rights. One of the most significant changes is the language used. Offensive terms such as “lunatic,” “idiot,” and “insane person” have been replaced with respectful expressions such as “person with a mental health condition” and “person with psychosocial or intellectual disability.”
The Act also strengthens patient autonomy. Treatment generally requires valid, informed, and written consent. In cases involving involuntary admission, stricter safeguards have been introduced. Instead of a single magistrate or medical officer making the decision, involuntary admission must now be supported by the assessment of two independent medical practitioners and must be based on a genuine risk of harm to the individual or others.
In other words, the Nigeria Mental Health Act moves Nigeria away from confinement and toward care.
New Institutions to Support Mental Healthcare
A Department of Mental Health Services within the Federal Ministry of Health is tasked with developing policies, accrediting psychiatric facilities, maintaining national standards, and conducting inspections. The Act also creates a Mental Health Assessment Committee to review involuntary admissions and prevent unlawful detention. Additionally, a Mental Health Fund has been established to support mental healthcare services through government allocations, grants, donations, and other approved sources.
Importantly, the Act recognises workplace rights by prohibiting employers from dismissing workers solely because of their mental health conditions. Instead, employers are expected to assist affected employees in obtaining medical evaluation and treatment.
A Disturbing Contradiction That Remains: Suicide Is Still a Crime
Despite its progressive provisions, the Nigeria Mental Health Act coexists with older criminal Acts that continue to criminalise attempted suicide.
Imagine a person suffering from severe depression. Imagine that person attempting suicide but surviving. Most Nigerians would agree that such a person needs immediate support, counselling, and healthcare. Yet under Section 327 of Nigeria’s Criminal Code and Section 231 of the Penal Code, attempted suicide remains a criminal offence.
Think about that for a moment. A person experiencing one of the most vulnerable moments of their life may face punishment instead of treatment. This contradiction has long troubled mental health advocates.
On one hand, Nigeria now recognises mental health as a healthcare issue through the Nigeria Mental Health Act. On the other hand, parts of our criminal Acts still treat certain mental health crises as criminal behaviour. For many experts, these conflicting approaches discourage people from seeking help and reinforce the stigma already surrounding mental illness.
The criminalisation of suicide attempts also discourages many people from seeking help. Families often conceal incidents to avoid legal consequences, leading to underreporting and inaccurate national suicide statistics. Although the Federal Government inaugurated a national task force on suicide decriminalisation in 2024, legislative reforms have yet to follow.
Lagos State: A Model with Lessons
Before the federal Act was enacted, Lagos State had already begun implementing mental health reforms.
Its Mental Health Policy was introduced in 2011, while the Lagos State Mental Health Service Act came into effect in 2018. Lagos has also experimented with digital mental health services such as LagosMiND, which provides online counselling, behavioural support, and crisis hotlines.
However, the Lagos experience demonstrates that legislation alone is insufficient. Many primary healthcare facilities still lack the personnel, equipment, and infrastructure necessary to deliver comprehensive mental healthcare services.
While the Act May Be New, the Challenges Are Not
One of the biggest obstacles facing the Nigeria Mental Health Act is inadequate funding. Nigeria has consistently fallen short of the Abuja Declaration target, which requires African Union member states to allocate at least 15% of their national budgets to healthcare. In reality, healthcare spending remains below 5% of the national budget. Mental health receives only a small fraction of that allocation. Furthermore, over 90% of available resources continue to be directed toward federal neuropsychiatric hospitals, leaving primary and secondary healthcare facilities underfunded.
Funding is not the only challenge. Nigeria is currently experiencing a severe shortage of mental health professionals due to the continued migration of healthcare workers abroad. Today, Nigeria has only about 300 practising psychiatrists serving a population exceeding 200 million people. As a result, nearly 80% of Nigerians living with mental health conditions lack access to formal psychiatric care and often rely on traditional or faith-based facilities, some of which have been associated with serious human rights abuses, including the shackling of patients.
A law may guarantee rights, but rights mean little if people cannot access services. A law may promise treatment, but treatment requires professionals, facilities, medication, and funding.
Why Many Nigerians Seek Help Outside Hospitals
For many Nigerians, emotional distress is first discussed with family members, pastors, imams, or traditional healers. These support systems play an important role in society. They provide comfort, belonging, and hope.
However, the Act has attracted criticism for its limited engagement with traditional and faith-based healing systems, which continue to play a major role in mental healthcare delivery across Nigeria. Many experts increasingly argue that these sectors should be regulated and integrated rather than ignored.
Community-based support should complement, not replace, professional mental healthcare. The challenge for Nigeria is finding ways to build those partnerships while protecting people from harmful practices and ensuring access to evidence-based treatment.
Beyond the Headlines
When a child is rescued from kidnappers, the story does not end. When a teacher survives captivity, recovery does not happen overnight. When a community experiences violence, healing takes time. Yet mental health often disappears from the conversation once the immediate danger has passed.
Perhaps this is because psychological wounds are invisible. You cannot photograph anxiety. You cannot broadcast trauma. You cannot easily measure fear. But they are real nonetheless.
Some provisions of the Act may also prove difficult to implement in practice. Requiring two independent medical practitioners to authorise involuntary admission may be unrealistic in areas experiencing severe doctor shortages.
The strict procedural requirements governing restraints may create difficulties during psychiatric emergencies in understaffed hospitals. The requirement for written consent may also pose challenges in a country where literacy levels remain uneven.
The Nigeria We Must Build
The Nigeria Mental Health Act allows Nigeria to rethink how we care for one another. It challenges us to move beyond stigma. It reminds us that seeking help is not a weakness, and it recognises that mental health is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
Several urgent reforms are still necessary. Mental health financing must be decentralised so that primary and secondary healthcare centres can provide basic psychiatric services. The Mental Health Fund should receive sustainable financing through health insurance integration and dedicated public health levies.
The government must invest in retaining psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses through improved remuneration and educational incentives. And authorities should develop regulatory partnerships with traditional and faith-based healers to promote human rights standards while recognising the important role these institutions play within Nigerian society.
As Nigerians, we must continue demanding better mental healthcare services, stronger funding, public awareness campaigns, and reforms that align our criminal Acts with modern mental health principles.
Conclusion
The Nigeria Mental Health Act of 2021 replaces a colonial-era legal framework that prioritised confinement over care and introduces a rights-based approach that recognises the dignity and autonomy of individuals living with mental health conditions.
Yet the true success of the Act will not be measured by its provisions on paper. It will be measured by whether Nigerians can access affordable mental healthcare, whether patients are protected from abuse, whether communities receive adequate services, and whether the government provides the resources necessary to make the Act a reality.
The next time you read about rescued schoolchildren, kidnapped teachers, or communities affected by violence, celebrate their survival but ask one more question: Who is helping them heal? Because rescue saves lives. Healing rebuilds them. And the Nigeria Mental Health Act, if properly funded and faithfully implemented, is the foundation that makes that healing possible.
Author: Adanna Nwaoku is a legal professional with a strong background in public policy, governance and mental health advocacy. Her work sits at the intersection of law and human welfare.
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