Covid-19: Assessing Plight of widows in times of a pandemic

Widows in Nigeria are in the category of the unheard and the forgotten as they are not part of national discourse. DOOSUUR IWAMBE examines the plight of widows in Nigeria and how some of the problem can be addressed.

The 45- year-old Josephine Okeke is a resident of Nyanya, a satellite town in the Federal Capital Territory. Mrs Okeke, a mother of seven children lost her husband about 20 years ago.

Following the death of her husband, Mrs Okeke and her seven children were immediately dispossessed of everything they owned.

“You will not live in that house, shouted her brother-in law. With these words ringing in her ears, Josephine and her children were chased away from their marital home.

“My children were still young and therefore they could not fight for their late father’s properties. I was subjected to countless hardship. We were sustaining ourselves on the small restaurant (Buka) that I was running in Nyanya until it was demolished by the authorities of the FCDA.

‘’It was during this period that the Rock of Ages Empowerment Foundation (RAEF), found us and since then; we have been benefiting from them’’, she said.

For her part, Mrs Gloria Emekpa, said that she lost her husband early this year.

Emekpa who disclosed that she was left with three kids added that her husband’s death is still like a dream to her.

She said, ‘’since my husband died, it has been very tough. No member of his family has called me to ask how the children and I are doing. I have three kids.

I got married to my husband in 2016 and since then, there is no day that I do not feel loneliness inside of me. Life has not been the same without him around’’.

Fatimo Adedeji, 30, and a mother of three, lost her husband two years ago on April 14, 2015. It was a sad day; her world as she knew it vanished.

One of the major issues following the death of a spouse is the question of who will be responsible for the children. They had three children: ages eight, five and 5-months at the time of their father’s death.

Her late husband’s family wanted to take the two older girls away from her. However, her father stepped in to say that they all should stay together and if they wanted to take the two girls, they would have to take the mother and baby too.

“You either take all four of them or leave them,” she says was her father’s response. So they left them to stay with her father.

“They gave me five Nigerian naira and then gave me their phone numbers that I should call whenever I need anything. I would call but they never picked up my call.” She says she suspects that they had agreed not to answer.

Adedeji says she remembers her late husband often, especially when it comes to responsibilities they shared.

“Is it when I want to buy things for the children? Or is it when the school threatens to send them back home for unpaid fees? You know I remember him and say: if he were here, we would do these together so there will not be a lapse’’.

Over the years, widows in Nigeria have been neglected and maltreated by the society. Few, if anybody, tend to listen and care about their welfare. It can be said there is no group more affected by the sin of omission than the widows.

They are left out of government’s policies and legislations; forgotten in the scheme of things. Even the media under-report the plight of these women as issues affecting them are neither mentioned frequently on the pages of newspapers nor highlighted by the broadcast media as it concerns the frustration, oppression, poverty, health and human rights problems that they face. In fact, widow’s advocacy is weakly made.

NGO seek more action to help widows in Nigeria

Meanwhile, a Non Governmental Organization, theRock of Ages Empowerment Foundation (RAEF), has called on government at all levels to come up with laws and policies to protect windows from barbaric cultures.

The founder of RAEF, Mr. Ignatius Newman, while speaking while celebrating the 2020 International Widows Day (IWD) with the theme: “I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights”, said when laws were put in place to protect widows and their children, they would be secured.

IWD is a United Nations (UN) ratified day of action to address the poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their dependents across the globe.

Newman, while speaking at the occasion, which also marked the 10th anniversary of the foundation, said there must be laws to protect women and the girl child.

He said, “Widows are going through a lot in the hands of relatives because government is yet make favourable laws that will protect their interests. If the laws are in place, nobody will come and chase any widow out of the house all in the name of husband’s relative or tell a widow to drink water they used to bath the husband’s corpse to prove her innocence that she is not responsible for the husband’s death.

“We have seen many times where a man died and family members snatched all the property from the woman and chased the woman and her children out of the house; leaving them to start living in struggle and pain.

‘’The state of widowhood in Nigeria is increasing on a daily basis because if you look at the problem of insurgency, kidnapping and banditry,  you will discover that the problems have increase the number of widows especially in this country Nigeria.

‘’I advocate always and all the time for the training of a girl child. If the girl child is trained in school to the level of having her first degree at least, she will be able to fend for herself.

‘’Education is the key because no matter how problematic things turn out in the event of losing a spouse,  it will expose them to do so many things to survive. The major problem of this issue is the training of the girl child. Most of the widows did not go through the former education and because of that, they were left to survive on minimal or anything they could just lay their hands on.

‘’My message to the government on the 2020 world widows day is that they should come up with laws to protect these women. If there is a law to protect them, they won’t be subjected through hardship after losing their husbands’’, Newman said.

About 3,000 widows from the six area councils of the FCT were part of the event at Pyakasa, near Lugbe, along Airport Road, Abuja.

All the widows received palliatives to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives.

RAEF has been helping Widows, Orphans and the less-privileged discover their potentials and supporting them in making changes to bring these potentials into the world by providing high quality, sustainable and replicable healthcare services, education support program and financial empowerment.

Over 258m surviving wives facing untold hardship

A new survey has revealed that about 258 million widows now face untold hardship across the world.

This is even as COVID-19 is imposing new challenges on women and exacerbating the numerous other difficulties they already face in their daily lives.

Amidst the alarming rise in the figures, women are also leading the health response with women making up almost 65 per cent of the health care response against COVID-19.

At the same time, women are also shouldering much of the burden at home, following school and child care facility closures and longstanding gender inequalities in unpaid work.

Addressing a press conference to mark International Widows Day yesterday in Abuja, the executive director, Women, Law and Development Initiative (WOLDI), Ms Hauwa Shekarau, decried the alarming figures of women being exposed to hardship, saying the COVID‑19 pandemic is harming health, social and economic well-being worldwide, with women at the centre.

Shekarau noted that the coronavirus pandemic and the attendant lockdowns and economic closures that are afflicting the world today have led to untold hardship on women most especially widows.

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She said most women don‘t have family support, healthcare, pension or even basic necessities to support themselves and their children.

She stated: “Aside the pandemic, most widows around the world have been subjected to diverse forms of harmful traditional practices, victimisation, discrimination and abuse.

“These vices are regularly on the increase, especially in developing societies such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria in particular. The voices, needs and experiences of these Widows are often suppressed and absent from government and societal policies that are likely to impact on their survival.’’

To alleviate the hardship on women, she called on the federal government to address the social stigma that has led to exclusion, and discriminatory or harmful practices against women to ensure that widows rights and needs are enshrined in international and domestic laws in line with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the convention on the rights of the child.

Shekarau further said that the group is ready to welcome every case of discrimination against widows and their children, adding that our doors are always opened and ready to listen and fight for their rights.

Include widows in the covid-19 response plans – UN

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ secretary-general, António Guterres, has called for the inclusion of widows in the COVID-19 response plans.

Guterres who made the call in a message on this year’s International Widows Day marked annually on June 23 stressed the need to include support for widows’ immediate needs in fiscal stimulus programmes

He said, “There is a need for governments to include support for widows’ immediate needs in fiscal stimulus programmes which for instance through access to cash transfers.

“This year’s International Widows Day takes place as the number of deaths from COVID-19 continues to rise in many places, especially for men.’’