Widows speak on how to alleviate poverty in their lives

Many of them don’t have access to these donations and government in particular till date does not have any specific budget and programmes that touche the lives of widows in this country or identify them wherever they are.Many of the widows live in hunger, lack clothes, food, health care and have no source of livelihood. […]

Many of them don’t have access to these donations and government in particular till date does not have any specific budget and programmes that touche the lives of widows in this country or identify them wherever they are.
Many of the widows live in hunger, lack clothes, food, health care and have no source of livelihood. Some of them live in such poor health that they and their children could die from an ailment 500 naira worth of drugs can cure because they cannot afford it.
 These is in addition to the harmful traditional practices, stigmatization and discrimination they face.
Some of them fall victims of charlatans who claim they could cure them miraculously and dupe them of any  little money they have because they cannot afford to go the hospital or buy over the counter drugs.
It is also disheartening that their numbers have kept on increasing by the day.
Some widows were either housewives or not working while their husbands were alive and relied wholly on their husbands to provide for the home so after his death they have little or nothing to fall back on. Some of them begin to live in poverty after a few days with no one to help them.
Payment of death benefits and entitlements are often delayed in this country with some running into years, and some widows even lack knowledge on how to access them or give up altogether because they cannot afford money to bribe corrupt officials, and cannot afford the cost of a letter of administration.
In other cases their husbands may have left cash and properties but wicked relatives seize them and even throw them out of the house. The women then find it difficult to cater for themselves and their children who could be many. The education of their young is sometimes aborted because of money for school fees.
According to the president of  Loomba Foundation ,Cherie Blair ,  “Of the 258 million widows across the world, more than 115 million live in poverty, 86 million have suffered physical abuse and 1.5 million children whose mothers who have been widowed will die before reaching the age of five.”
Chairperson, International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA Nigeria ) Abuja Branch, Amina Suzanah Agbaje said many of the  widows live in poverty and struggling to survive.
She said: “Many of these women and their children are malnourished, exposed to disease and deprivation. Children of widows face horrors attributable to homelessness, child marriage, illiteracy, loss of schooling, forced labour , human trafficking, sexual and violent abuse.”   
The Home Front sought the views of widows as the country joined the rest of the work to mark this year’s International Widows Day on Tuesday, June 23rd.
According to Mrs  Nkechi Ohiri, Chair lady of Brekete Widows Association ( with membership of over 4,000 widows and founded by Ordinary Ahmed) said what should be done to end poverty in the lives of widows is to empower them with a source of livelihood and money and other things needed to start the businesses ,not donating clothes or wrappers and food to them.
 “Empower them by training them with skills. Some of the widows are educated and a lot of them tell me they need jobs. If a widow wants to fry akara, train her and give her the money to start frying  akara . Like me, my organisation sponsored me to learn how to make buns and chin-chin, and what I need now is money to start the business,” she said.
She said she has been a widow for 14 years and faces the  challenge of catering for her children and paying their school fees, adding that since the past 14 years none of her husband’s relatives has called her even once, don’t even know if she exists or if her children are attending school or not.
She lamented that the society is letting widows down so much because they think widowhood is a curse saying if people see a widow standing near a man they call her a harlot and all sort of names and this makes widows live in agony.
She said many NGOs use widows as a guise to enrich themselves, and often gather widows to get money from donors in order to build houses for themselves and their families.
She added that government too only call elite widows and women, and show off donations in pictures and infront of media cameras without reaching out to the real widows saying “because many of widows I know have never received anything from government.”
The Home Front also met a visibly frail Mrs Blessing Godwin at one of the events organized for widows by a foundation and she couldn’t control her tears as she narrated how she had a business doing but sold everything to care for her sick husband who later died.
She said since then things have been very hard for her added with the fact that she has also fallen sick herself.
To her , widows need support to be able to cater for themselves. Using herself as an example,  she said she has skills and all she needed was money to keep her business running again and also treat herself.
Mrs Titi Yusuf who has been a widow for about 20 years said being a widow does not mean laziness. She said the lack of employment in the country is also affecting widows to the point that the children they have suffered to train do not have jobs and have to rely on them too, thereby causing them much hardship.
 “Government should create more job opportunities even the lower ones. They must not give money but give work so that at least our children who are up to 20 years and above can work and support their mother and siblings,” she said.
Nkechi Iwuoha, another widow on her part said government needs to support widows by giving them work to do, and also help train their children in school.
She said, “no matter how they keep donating little cash and rice the widows will still continue to lack and have problems.”
She said none of her six children who are of school age are attending school because she has no job and money to train them in school.
According to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development , Dr Ezekiel Oyemomi at an event organized by the ministry to mark this year’s Widow’s Day, “ the population of widows is steadily increasing in Nigeria following the death of their husbands. These women have to cater for themselves and their families alone sometimes without the appropriate knowledge and skills needed to take over the role that fate had bestowed on them following the trauma of losing loved ones.”
He said the situation in Nigeria has been aggravated by the recurrent spate of terror attacks purported by some violent groups like Boko  Haram, militants and inter-tribal crises in various parts of the country.
According to him, the improvement of the situation of Nigerian widows would largely depend on how Nigerians respond to the plight of widows. He encouraged all Nigerians to  individually and collectively spare a thought for widows in order to bring about an improvement in their wellbeing and that of their children.
And just as the President of the Loomba Foundation, Cherie Blair said, “We need to empower all women, both financially and socially, to give them the tools to support themselves and their families. We need to start seeing them as contributors to society, as assets, not as objects of pity or, even worse, objects of shame. The benefits will extend not only to them but to their children, communities and society as a whole.”