Given the insecurity in Nigeria and men of the disciplined agencies recording casualties on all fronts, more of their loved ones are now exposed to widowhood and its heart-wrenching conditions, NGOZI EGENUKA reports.
She recounted that whenever she asked her elder brother for support, he would tell her to relocate to the village. With no help coming forth, she changed her children’s school to a tuition-free government-owned facility. Asked whether the family dumped her, Zion said her husband was the pillar of his family and his family stripped her of his belongings after he died. Her consolation is that her children are growing and there is hope for them.
She must face the odds daily, as she is still trying to get over the loss, because in her words, “I have lost my best friend. The only person I was licensed to disturb because he was my own.” “Immediately he died, I had to start planning to leave the accommodation at the base because people were already interested in it. So, I didn’t wait to be pushed out and someone is currently occupying the house,” she said.
According to conversion.com, an international research agency, Nigeria is home to about 15 million of the world’s 258 million widows. Traditionally, in countries like Nigeria, which is a patriarchal society, where men represent the family lineage, becoming a widow puts a woman in a disadvantaged position.
Indeed, widows in Africa have had to bear the brunt of maltreatment, ranging from economic exploitation, verbal abuse, cultural malpractices, disrespect, delay in receiving their late husbands’ entitlements, physical abuse, negligence as well as emotional or psychological exploitation. These experiences make widows vulnerable to stigmatisation, depression, isolation, and suicide.
To ascertain the number of widows, the President of the Military Widows Association , Veronica Aloko, said they are in the thousands. She lamented that her late husband’s younger brother seized from her, building materials she was using to renovate a house she wanted to put up for rent as a source of income. “He threatened that the house would crumble like the wall of Jericho in the Bible and as I speak to you, that is the state of the house.”