“The right to die is not fundamentally about death…Nigeria may not be ready for assisted dying. But we are long overdue for the courage to speak its name.”
Mrs. Adeboluyo had stopped fighting the cancer. At sixty-seven, after eighteen months of chemotherapy, radiation burns, and morphine that no longer touched the pain, she turned to her doctor with a question that hung in the air like smoke. “Can’t you just let me go?”
The doctor looked away. There was no answer. Not in his training. Not in the Hippocratic Oath he swore. Not in any Nigerian law he could cite. There was only the silence we have built around dying in this country, a silence that pretends to be mercy but often becomes its opposite.
Mrs. Adeboluyo died two weeks later, aspirating on her own fluids, her body finally overriding the machines. She never got her answer. Millions of Nigerians in similar circumstances never do.
We have perfected the art of looking away from death while medical technology prolongs it, creating a twilight zone where people are kept alive because we lack the legal language to let them die.
The Law’s Absence
Nigerian law says almost nothing about the right to die. The Constitution guarantees life, but courts have interpreted this as a mandate to preserve existence at any cost, not as a right to choose how that existence ends.
Meanwhile, Section 327 of the Criminal Code Act and Section 231 of the Penal Code criminalise attempted suicide, a colonial relic the British themselves abandoned.
Change is emerging. Section 233 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2011 moved toward “hospitalisation over incarceration.” In February 2026, a Bill to decriminalise suicide reached the National Assembly, with a Federal Government target of December 2025 for implementation.
The Supreme Court in Adeyanju v. State [(2015) 13 NWLR (Pt. 1477) 475 SC] has begun recognising mental health contexts. But we remain far from legal clarity on end-of-life decisions.
What Actually Happens In Our Hospitals
Walk through the wards of any Nigerian teaching hospital and you will find the unspoken practice of passive euthanasia. Doctors, faced with patients for whom cure is impossible and comfort inadequate, quietly withdraw aggressive treatments. Morphine drips are increased to levels that suppress respiration. Families are asked, in coded language, whether they want “everything done” or whether it is “time to let go.”
These decisions happen in shadows. They are made without legal protection for physicians, without clear standards for family consent, without documentation that could protect vulnerable patients from abuse.
The wealthy fly to Switzerland, Belgium, or Oregon in the United States, where assisted dying is legal and regulated. The poor simply suffer until their bodies surrender, often in conditions that strip away the dignity we owe every human being.
We have created a two-tiered system of dying. Those with resources can purchase autonomy; those without are subject to the arbitrary mercy of institutional practice.
Meeting The Objections
Life is sacred, some say. Yet the law already permits patients to refuse blood transfusions or leave hospitals against advice. We have accepted human agency in medical decisions; we simply refuse honesty about its scope.
This is a slippery slope. Jurisdictions that legalise assisted dying impose strict safeguards—psychiatric evaluation, multiple opinions, waiting periods. Our silence prevents not abuse, but the detection of abuse.
African culture prioritises family over individual choice. A Nigerian framework could require family consultation without granting veto, recognising that autonomy here is relational, not atomistic.
Three Reforms Within Reach
I do not call for assisted suicide legalisation—yet. I propose three achievable steps…
First, complete the decriminalisation of attempted suicide. The National Assembly Bill and December 2025 federal target offer momentum. Suicidal ideation requires intervention, not punishment.
Second, legalise advance directives. Every Nigerian of sound mind should document refusal of future life-prolonging treatment. This is not euthanasia; it is bodily integrity when consciousness fails.
Third, mandate palliative care access. Talk of the “right to die” is hollow when pain relief is unavailable. A 2026 scoping review in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management confirms Nigeria meets only 0.2 per cent of its palliative care need—leaving 99.8 per cent of terminal patients without support.
Access to morphine remains severely limited across states. Before we speak of choosing death, we must ensure life with terminal illness is not itself torture.
The Conversation We Owe
Mrs. Adeboluyo’s question deserved an answer. It deserved a system capable of discussing options without fear, a culture able to look at dying directly rather than through euphemism.
We failed her. We fail thousands like her, not from lack of compassion, but from channeling that compassion into silence. We mistake avoidance for protection.
The right to die is not fundamentally about death. It is about whether our final days are governed by our values or by machinery, by honest conversation or by the doctor’s averted gaze.
Nigeria may not be ready for assisted dying. But we are long overdue for the courage to speak its name.
