SPECIAL REPORT
The Plight of Widows
DEATH IS INEVITABLE. MEANING THAT, EVERY MORTAL BEING MUST DIE ONE DAY. IT IS ALSO A KNOWN FACT THAT EVERY PERSON THAT IS OF AGE IS AWARE OF THIS. THE ONLY THING NOT KNOWN TO ANYBODY IS THE ACTUAL DAY. THOUGH ALMOST ALL FAITHS BELIEVE THAT THE ONLY PASSAGE TO ANOTHER LIFE (WHICH IS ALSO OFTEN DESCRIBED AS BETTER THAN THE TYPE BEING EXPERIENCED IN THIS WORLD) IS THROUGH DEATH, YET NOBODY EVER WANTED TO DIE. THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE IS NOT ONLY PAINFUL BUT BRINGS ABOUT SORROW, SUFFERING AND CONFUSION AMONG FAMILY MEMBERS. IN THIS SPECIAL REPORT, JOSEPH A. ADUDU TAKES A LOOK ON THE AGONY AND TRAUMA MOST WOMEN GO THROUGH AFTER THE LOSS OF THEIR HUSBANDS.
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| Widow mourning
Former Miss Rose Nankpa (real name withheld) got married to late Sunday Dakwak (real name withheld) and the union was blessed with four children. According to Rose, late Sunday was more than a husband.
“He was everything to me: husband, friend, brother and father. He was always forthcoming. He was never wanting in any area of his responsibility as a father and husband. We never lacked. He proved all our needs. In fact he loved his family with passion. I always had the feeling that no woman was as lucky to have a husband like myself. He was humble, quiet and humane. He also had a soft spot for everyone and never considered any as an enemy.
“He had the habbit of sharing the little he had with those who didn’t have at all. He loved his children so dearly and cherished me very much. My husband was hardworking and abhorred laziness,” said Rose.
But just like the popular adage which says, “Good things never last,” the cold hands of death snatched Sunday away early 2007 after a strange illness.
According to Rose, her husband was working in one of the government-owned media outfits in Jos and had just been transferred to Lafia when he fell sick. He was taken to Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) where he was admitted for some weeks before he died.
“When my husband died, his parents came to our house the following day and packed away everything including upholstery, leaving me with the children in an empty house. Even the monetary contribution made to us by his former organization never got to me. I didn’t see it. The house we built was also taken away by his parents, leaving me with no option than to rent a room and parlour for myself and four children.
“The most unfortunate thing is that I don’t have a job but saddled with the responsibility of raising four children who are all in school.”
She said ever since her husband died, his parents never deemed it fit to visit her and find out how she was faring with the children.
“But I thank God for everything because I have seen His hand in my life and in the lives of my children. My eldest son graduated from secondary school and I pray he gets admission into a higher institution,” she concluded.
The above sad story is only one out of thousands in a society bereft of humane characters.
Speaking to our correspondent recently, Christiana Luka, a 25-year-old widow whose husband died in 2008, said: “It was like all the gates of hell were let loose on me. His parents have not stopped accusing me of killing their son. Immediately after my husband died, my in-laws went to his shop (he was a welder) and removed all the equipment and the boys that were working with him had to leave.”
Sympathizers
Few years back, the media was awash with the story of one Mrs. Olusola Ejidiran, a widow in Ibadan, who was engaged in a drama with her in-laws over the ownership of a house she claimed, was a joint effort of her and her late husband, a tale the husband’s relations disagreed. with.
Nine years after the demise of her husband, Mrs. Olusola Ejidiran, who had remained since then without a husband, said she was done sitting in limbo and called on Nigerians to free her from entanglement put on her legs by the family of her late husband.
The widow, who said remarrying in the family was a bitter pill she could not swallow, disclosed that one of the younger ones to her late husband who had show interest in her has more than a wife at home and she was not prepared to join the harem.
The then Chairperson of Oyo State International Federation of Women Lawyers, Mrs. Dupe Awosemusi said the Executive Director of the Centre for Grassroots Women Advancement and Development (CEGWA), Mrs. Priscilla Titilade, frowned at the development, saying that much as the widow has inalienable right to remarry any man of her choice, she has a right of claim to all property left behind by her late husband.
Mrs. Ejidiran who lived at Opeyemi Ajagba, Wakajaye, a suburb of Ibadan in Egbeda Local Government Area of Oyo State, was 25 years old when her husband died in 1997 from a wound he sustained on his hand.
“My late husband was an upholstery maker. He loved me and my children very well. He was a caring husband. The trouble started when a sawing machine cut a finger of his right hand. We took him to the hospital and the cut was stitched.
“Later, he complained of severe pain from the finger. We took him to three hospitals before landing at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. He died there. We were later told he died of tetanus infection.
“When my husband was sick, my in-laws did much they could to assist us, but shortly after he died they all abandoned me,” she said.
In the words Esther Aderola, another widow, “Now, my new name is rejection. I am no longer wanted. People who heard my story are running away from me, calling me a witch who had killed her husband.” She became an object of derision by people around her over the death of her husband.
In 2003, her first husband, the father of her first two children, died in a motor accident along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
In December 2008 she remarried, but fate was still cruel to her as the new husband died in September 2010.
As if to multiply her sorrow, her co-tenant who had an altercation with her called her a witch and accused her of killing her husbands.
According to Esther, her neighbour has reportedly told her: “Don’t kill my husband, you witch. Any man who marries you has signed his death warrant.”
It is unfortunate that some cultures are unkind to widowhood and women who lose their husbands are subjected to humiliation.
Agonies of widows were the topic for discussion at a mini-conference organized by Centre for Grassroots Women Advancement and Development (CEGWAD) at its national office in Ibadan recently.
Widow undergoing traditional rite to proof she did not killed her husband
According to the initiator of CEGWAD, a non-governmental organization whose mandate is economic justice and women’s rights, Mrs. Priscilla Titilayo Adefioye, this kind of conference is often convened to lecture and empower the widows.
Some of the widows who shared their experiences with pressmen wept profusely as they spoke.
Mrs. Sariatu said, “I lost my husband in 2009 when he and his friend died in a well they were digging. After his death, life became extremely hard for me and my children. I used to sell smoked fish but because of a debt of N94,000 I owed those who supplied me the fish, I was forced to close shop. My creditors often ambushed my children when hawking the fish and would confiscate the wares because I couldn’t pay what I owed.
“I have been abandoned by my husband’s family members. One part of the house built by my husband is dilapidated and whenever it rains, it is always as if we are in the rain. I thank God that I was in the Church with my children when the last flood swept away many houses and people.
“The worst harassment and threat to my life as a widow came from a bosom friend of my late husband who insisted on having amorous relationship with me, but I refused.”
Another widow, Mrs. Fatima Omowumi Durodola, stated that her husband died on September 21, 2005. According to her, the husband, being hypertensive, died from the shock of the news of the killing of a night guard in their area of Wakajaye, Ibadan, and that of his younger brother living at Iwo in Osun State, the same day.
“He developed complications immediately and died before afternoon of that day. I have been living from hand to mouth since then. A part of our building was destroyed by the last flood. I therefore call on good people of Nigeria to come to my aid.”
Mrs. Josephine Aboki told journalists: “It is after your husband’s death that you can know the real persons in your in-laws.
“Two months after my husband’s death, his siblings held a meeting in our house and I was told to surrender the Certificate of Occupancy (C. of O.) of our house, the keys of my own car and that of my husband and I was given some months to vacate the house.
“My in-laws accused me of witchcraft, saying that I killed their son because I did not want him to marry a lady who they had proposed to replace me with.
“All that the family asked me to do in order to prove innocence I did, including drinking urine believed to be that of my late husband. I neither died nor fell sick, because I know that I did not kill the man.
“Before the expiry date, I packed out of the house to a rented single room with my three children, because my children were having terrible nightmares they had never experienced when their father was alive. I did not want to lose any of my children.”
Mrs. Joke Adebanji and Mrs. Titilayo Akindele lost their husbands to mysterious ailments. Though the two women were not driven away from their homes, the families of their late husbands left them to their fate. Mrs. Akindele said, “If you exert too much pressure on them, they can ask, ‘are we the ones who killed your husband?’”
However, the CEWAD Executive Director, Mrs. Adefioye said many of the widows were being treated like outcasts and it varied from culture to culture.
Mrs. Adefioye said, “Many of these women were maltreated as if they were responsible for the death of their husbands. Some were made to swear at their husbands’ graveside or drink the water used to wash the corpses of their husbands in order to prove their innocence.”
In the words of Pastor S. D. Watyil, “God described widows as special because of His concern for them. God says that whoever cheats or maltreats a widow, He would surely punish such a person.”
According to him, God also gives instructions to the church concerning widows and their plight. So, the church is saddled with the responsibility of taking care of the widow.
Pastor Watyil further decried the way and manner widows are subjected to all sorts of victimization.
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“Even churches are involved in this victimization of a thing so also some former employers of the lates (that is where he was working before his death). So you can see that most widows are always subjected to undue pressure just to make them compromise over issues most especially as it invoves benefits of their late husbands. Often times, you see some wicked people in an organization transferring monetary benefits of a late husband meant for his wife and children into their personal accounts to generate interest at the detriment of the widow,” he said.
In his submission, Pastor Harrison Damang of Solid Rock Chapel, Vom, Jos South LGA, Plateau state said some churches are afraid widows would lord it over them, which is contrary to biblical injunction that enjoins the church to not only identify with the widows, but to cater for their needs.
Additional reports by Lovins Yakubu, Dickson Gupiya and Emmanuel Atabat.
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