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NGO Trains Military Wives On Mental Health, Psychological Support in Abuja
Joel Ajayi
In its effort to support and equip Nigeria’s women on mental health, psychological, a non-governmental organization known as ”The Support Nest Initiative” has trained officers’ wives in Abuja to help them navigate through peculiarities of military marriages as well as life.
The 5-day training which took place inside the Lungi Barracks focuses on the mental health of the Nigerian Military wives and will enable them to become first respondents and lay counsellors in their communities.
Speaking on Friday at the end of, the awareness, the Director of the organization, Bukola Ugbuji said that objective of the training is to the mental awareness and support to a person suffering from mental health illnesses, especially service, women, and their families.
She lamented that the mental health of the military wife has been neglected and as one of the officer’s wives who know the pains and would not want others to pass through the same.
According to her, while the military has psychologists and psychiatrists to look after the men, it seems as their families are neglected. At the end of the day, there are not enough military psychologists to go round.
“We are going to set up groups and distribute fliers and notification to people across the Barracks. We will tell them to call a particular number if they need to talk. The number will be routed to the women who will then be able to offer to counsel.
“Living and caring for the family member experiencing Pos-TrumaticStress Disorder PSTD could be challenging, that is why we have compiled the list of ways to support the affected family member.”
She revealed that that the organization also holds sensitization workshops and campaigns within the barracks and military formations to raise awareness of mental health issues particularly those common within the military.
Mrs. Ugbuji, the mental health enthusiast added that the 24 women have been trained to become lay counselors who will go into their communities and offer the first line of support to members of their community.
Speaking earlier, the facilitator and Special Programmes Coordinator for ILERA Community Health Initiative, Nigeria, Yomi Oloko revealed that its programme which was funded by the African Foundation for Development, UK was aimed at supporting training on mental health, a topic which is necessary especially with the trauma and stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He stated that the women are trained to be lay counselors, explaining that the lay counsellors were ordinary people who want to be a helper or support people who have mental issues by listening to them and urging them to open up and talk to find their own solution to the issues they face.
“Lay counsellors are important particularly now that we had a lot of issues around depression and anxiety, especially with the COVID-19. A lot of people are worried and they need people they can talk to sometimes, they need independent or neutral people.”
One of the participants, Kauna Ottah, commended the organization for the training saying it will go a long way to help her handle people with mental health issues.
“Also, our personnel who are out there in the Northeast and Northwest might come back with trauma because of what they have experienced. The training is a welcome development because it is going to have a positive impact on our soldiers, we the spouse and our families.”
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ELECTING A POPE: THE BURDEN OF MAKING CHOICES
By Olubunmi Mayaki
“Habemus papam!” which in the English Language means, “We have a Pope.” was pronounced by Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a French Catholic prelate, His Eminence, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti from the iconic loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City on Thursday 8 May 2025 after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Those Latin words proclaimed to a tensed global audience the result of the election of a new Supreme Pontiff after the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on 21 April 2025 at the age of 88 years.
The Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV) emerged as primus inter pares (first among equals) from the cardinals after undergoing detailed election rituals, which have been the process of selecting the head of the 2000-year-old Catholic Church for centuries.
A papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected, was held consisting of one hundred and thirty-three (133) College of Cardinals, drawn from different parts of the world converged at St. Peter’s Basilica for a public mass before heading to the Sistine Chapel to cast their votes to elect the 267th Pope. During the mass, part of the choir renditions reminded voters to remember their last day when they would stand before God in judgment to render their stewardship on earth, which is to prevent them from rigging the voting process. At the behest of the senior cardinal deacon, voting formalities were read to the electors, which included- oath-taking- “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom I believe should be elected according to God”. Other processes are banning phones, jamming calls, forbidding speaking or contacting any of the candidates, voting rounds, spiritual pauses etc.
Looking at the voting process, one should be curious about how an election to pick a leader for a religious body could be so systematic and attract such global attention. It is a sharp contrast to elections where political leaders are chosen. Even in the so-called advanced democracies, we have seen electoral flaws and a dearth of political leaders. States are finding it difficult to pick genuine statesmen, giving rise to hegemonic leaders. These political imperia ums are emerging and stoking crises in their domain. Fallouts of elections are no longer favourable due to unpopular candidates forced on citizens.
Africa, as a case study, shows that no matter the rules put in place by the continent’s leaders, our election processes have been fraught with rigging, corruption and waste. In most cases, the leaders who set the rules are the violators of the same process. Governments conspire with electoral bodies to truncate election processes at will. Such political brigandage has destroyed the progress of the continent.
Closing this view, I hope that African leaders will take a cue from the Catholic Church’s election process to reinvigorate and rejig the continent’s faltering political process for the good of its people. Better still; political scholars from the continent can study the Catholic model. The common features of elections in most parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, are riddled with vote rigging, violence, human rights abuse, repression, barbarism, crises, untold hardship, and sometimes, outright war. This is the bane of Africa’s development.
The burden of making good political choices should ordinarily rest on citizens. However, politicians have hijacked this process for selfish reasons. It has given birth to bad leaders. If we fail to get it right, what we see is what we get. That is the story of the world politics!
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