Features

WIDOWHOOD IN NIGERIA

By Josephine Effah-Chukwuma

Mrs Gladys Michael, 44 years old became a widow 18 years ago (1982) when she lost the man she had married at the tender age of 16 years. According to her "At the time my husband died in 1982, it was the tenth year of our marriage and I was eight months pregnant. It was a period of agony for me, especially as an expectant mother. My in-laws despite my condition, did not have pity for me. They were more concerned about laying hands on his bank documents even while his corpse was still in the mortuary. They never cared about the six children we had, the eldest at the time being 8 years old. Up till date no one of them has come to find out how we are faring. For eighteen (18) years now, I have been bearing the burden on my own."

For Chika Offor an English graduate from the University of Ibadan, she can never forget 1990 the year she lost her father. According to her she was then a Senior Secondary School Student. "We are just two girls and I am the eldest. Home was paradise until my father died. The problem started even before my father was buried. My father’s brothers and some other relatives practically blamed my mother for my father’s death. They called her a witch who had killed their brother in order to inherit his property. They also told her that as soon as the burial was over, she and her witch children (i.e my sister and I) would be thrown out of the house especially as there was no male child. They kept to their words as soon after my father was buried, we were all ejected from our home. For months, my mother was inconsolable. I had to grow up over night, forget my own sorrow and be a source of strength for both my mother and sister. I was actually scared that my mother would die too. Thank GOD we all survived the nasty experience."

Mrs Arit Jimmy, Etuk a professional accountant lost her husband and her first son in a ghastly motor accident, after 30 years of marriage while her husband was said to die on the spot, her son Okon, then a second year student at University of Ibadan, died later at Aba General Hospital where he was rushed to.

Arit’s woes started on the same day her husband died. She was accused of killing him through witchcraft, and taken to the village killing him through witchcraft, and taken to the village court. She was booed from street to street by the mob championed by the Iban Ikpa Isong Uyo (Uyo Women Society) in Akwa Ibom State. Stones were hauled at her and she was prevented from entering her matrimonial home amidst curses on her to perish for allegedly killing her husband. Her photographs were taken and displayed in various market places as the killer of her husband and made an object of ridicule.

Arit was not the only subject of severe torture and humiliation, but also her remaining four children (2 girls and 2 boys). Her husband’s property were seized, the result of it being that her eldest daughter Affiong who at the time was a fifth year medical student in University of Ibadan, had to withdraw from school. There was no money to meet her school needs. Her two sons Akwaowo and Idiongesit were arrested and locked up for 2 weeks on the order of their uncles, when they attempted asking for their late father’s property. Arit had to send a petition to the Assistant Inspector General of Police Zone 6, Calabar, before the kids were granted bail. Later the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) withdrew the case against them for lack of evidence.

According to Arit, she neither quarreled with her husband nor his brothers before his untimely death. Instead she wondered why a family she loved so much, would treat her like a leper or outcast on trumped up charges.

These are some of the experiences of widows in Nigeria. For most widows in Nigeria, the death of their husband is not only a time for emotional grief but also a time when they fear severe torture and humiliation would be unleashed on them by their in-laws. It is a time for scores to be settled. Widows in Nigeria are often accused of being responsible for the death of their husbands. This is however not the case for widowers.

When a man loses his wife culture is more sympathetic to him. Unlike a widow, he is not expected or pressurized to manifest his grief openly as this is considered unmanly.

Furthermore in some communities he is not even allowed to sleep alone. A woman or women would be brought to keep him company. Additionally widowers often appropriate the property left by their late wives without any resistance from their kith and kin.

According to Mrs Marie Marire, a widow and president of Mums and widows Association, "if dead men could wake up from their graves for one minute, see the pains and sufferings of their wives and beloved children, they would definitely regret not (leaving a will or making their wives their next of kin"

Even as we have entered the twenty-first century, widows in Nigeria continue to be victims of a wide range of discriminatory, dehumanizing rites which further deepens their grief over the death of their husbands rather than help alleviate it. They are subjected to various rites that greatly undermine their rights, social, physical and psychological well-being. These rites and practices include widow disinheritance; forced marriage to in-laws; prolonged mourning period; being forced to sleep with the corpse; forced incessant loud wailing; shaving of hair and sitting on the floor; required to wear black clothes for a year; and deprivation of personal hygiene (not taking bath for days, and eating from broken unwashed plates).

Widows are not slaves. They are not outcasts. Neither are they second class citizens. The continued brutality and humiliation inflicted on defenseless widows in the name of culture and tradition, have become Nigeria’s shame.