Nigerians on Thursday mourned the death of a female bank worker in Ikorodu, Lagos State, who took her own life.
The 32-year-old Amarachi Ugochukwu was said to have died after consuming an insecticide.
Freelanews learnt that the incident happened on Monday within the premises of a bank.
Ugochukwu had around 1pm made her way into the restroom, where she was said to have drunk the insecticide, unknown to her colleagues.
Other members of staff had started looking for her when the phone she left on her table kept ringing and she was not around to pick the calls.
A police source confirmed to one of our correspondents that Ugochukwu was later found dead inside the toilet with the bottle of insecticide and her suicide note.
In the suicide note obtained by our correspondent, the lady blamed the hard economy for her decision to end her life, lamenting nothing was working well for her.
“Nothing is working in my life. My figures are low. My brain is clogged up. The economy is getting harder. My decisions are wrong. My mind is messed up. The future doesn’t seem bright at all. I see extreme hardship. I can’t bear the pain anymore,” she wrote in the suicide note.
Ugochukwu apologised to her parents and other members of her family in the suicide note.
“I’m sorry mum, I’m sorry dad, I’m sorry Nene, Okwe, Toto, Nazor, Chuchu, Ifunanya,” she added.
She concluded by writing, “Dear Lord, have mercy on me!”
Freelanews gathered from sources that the manager of the bank had reported the incident to the police.
The bank manager had reportedly told the police that Ugochukwu locked herself up in the toilet to commit suicide, and she was found dead when the door was forced open.
“The corpse was removed by the police and deposited at the Ikorodu General Hospital for autopsy. The police in Lagos are investigating the incident,” a source added.
When contacted, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, confirmed to our correspondent that the incident happened.
“I confirm it happened,” the PPRO simply said in a text sent to our correspondent when asked about the matter on Thursday.
While expressing sadness over the incident, a Facebook user, Folusho Adebisi, claimed the late female banker combined multiple jobs to survive.
While describing her as friendly and hardworking, Adebisi wrote that aside from her banking job, the deceased also engaged in shoemaking.
He recalled how his son, Tiwalade, patronised her footwear and how he had personally met her on a few occasions.
He wrote, “Tiwalade, my son, woke me up this morning to the terrible news trending online about a young lady, Amarachi Ugochukwu, a banker committing suicide. Amarachi was a friend of Tiwalade and customer of his business, Donetsk Footwear Limited. I had met Amarachi on a few occasions when she came for deliveries at Donetsk Footwear during the festivities.
“Amarachi was a young lady, friendly, amiable and hardworking, a lady cobbler that combined her stressful job of a banker with another stressful business of shoemaking and marketing. I read she left a suicide note complaining of a hard life, hard economy etc.”
Activist, Segun Awosanya, popularly known as Segalink on X, said the incident was a cause to continually hold people in power accountable.
“The economy is hard on us all in varying degrees. No one is spared. Not even government institutions find it difficult to operate, yet cannot complain despite being demonised unjustly by political opportunists.
“It is for this cause that we hold our political leaders, government and their MDAs accountable not because any individual is hated or targeted,” his post on X via @segalink, partly read on Thursday.
“May God Almighty grant the family the fortitude to bear the loss and may others contemplating the same find timely intervention. Please talk to someone. You are not alone in your struggle. The rich also cry. To each their own. Trying times don’t last,” he added.
Quadri Olaitan is a journalist and contributor to Freelanews.com, covering news, public affairs, and human-interest stories.
