Some of the potential risks cited in the article include anxiety, depression and arrested breast development in teenage girls.
Reflecting what might be interpreted as conservative attitudes of the Nigerian healthcare professionals quoted, author Seye Adeniyi, in the newspaper’s “Your Health” column, cites several undocumented and outdated sources to endorse the article’s premise that masturbation might actually be dangerous.
“In fact, nervous problems are always more common in those who indulge in this sort of thing,” said Dr. Bayo Omole, whose field of specialization is not stated in the article. “Many of them seem unable to face reality. Frequent masturbation, with its tendency to daydreaming, can be harmful, particularly to those who are subject to nervous depression. So, I would advise young people, especially anybody who wants to enjoy his/her life to avoid the dirty, unholy sexual habit called masturbation.”
Okeke Uzoamaka, a senior social worker with the Center For Reproductive Health, Aromatherapy and Development or CEREHAD, said that the Internet has influenced many young people to participate in “unwholesome sexual habits” like masturbation, lesbianism and homosexuality.
“Many young school boys and girls now go to cybercafés to watch pornographic films on the Internet,” Uzoamaka said. "Though many of them would tell you they are going to browse; but ask them what actually are they browsing? It is either X-rated films, or blue films, or they are looking for ways to commit Internet fraud or crime. So, this is where they learn all these dirty sexual habits like masturbation which eventually would mar their health later in the future."
Other sources in the report give a counterpoint to the debate over masturbation. Explaining that while masturbation still remains a taboo and secretive practice in Nigeria, there are a few healthcare professionals who do not see its negative effects.
An un-named doctor said, “Some medical practitioners and psychologists have condemned masturbation as destructive to mental health, even recommending amputation of the penis as a way to cure the habit in compulsive males.
“But today, many medical experts are beginning to change their belief. For me, there is no ill effect attached to masturbation. There is nothing wrong in it. It is not against the law. It is not immoral. It is perfectly a normal, healthy thing done by 98 percent of men, but the other 2 percent are liars, who will not want to say the truth, but yet practice it.”
In the report, Adeniyi goes as far as to say that masturbation has caused “more deaths among boys in Europe than any plague or war.” Also, he cites various medical data from unnamed studies, as well as the religious repercussions of excessive masturbation as expressed by Pastor Yemi Aduloju of Ibadan.
The article finishes with a list of the potential pitfalls of masturbation, including “nervous depression” resulting in permanent insanity, premature death for those with high blood pressure and diabetes, premature ejaculation, inability to perform the sex act naturally and “spinal irritation resulting from epilepsy as a result of loss of seminal fluid in a male.”