Breaking News:A Group Campaign Against Negative Widowhood Practices in Enugu State.

A group, the Aku Diewa Lawyers Forum, has launched a campaign against negative widowhood practices in Enugu State and other parts of the South East. The campaign commenced with a sensitisation workshop at Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State, where the group informed widows that they are protected by law from all forms of discrimination. The group urged the widows to seek redress in law courts whenever they are being subjected to unfair widowhood practices. A member of the group, Barrister Mrs Carolyn Ugwu, in a paper titled ‘Widowhood rights, challenges and remedies under the law’ identified a number of “negative widowhood practices” in the South East, most of which are based on culture and traditional beliefs. The concerned widowhood practices include shaving of a widow’s head, eyebrow and pubic hair, forcing a widow to sit on a cold bare floor during the mourning period and forcing a widow to wear mourning clothes for specific periods up to a year in white or black apparel. Others are secluding the widow from public view with husband’s corpse for a period of time before burial, chasing a widow away from her husband’s property for not having a male child and forcing a widow to drink water used in washing the husband’s body where it was suspected that she was responsible for her husband’s death. Ugwu added that, in some communities, the widow is forced to sleep with a fetish high priest in order to separate the supposed spirit of the dead husband from her.Despite the physical and psychological trauma involved in the travails widows are made to go through, Igbo tradition believes it is an abomination for a woman to die while performing the widowhood rites. Ugwu noted that, during the period, most widows were starved and deprived of sleep. She said the practices were primitive, stressing that they had no place in the 21st century. Chairman of the Aku Diewa Lawyers Forum, Barrister Chijioke Ogbobe, said widows should not shy away from going to court to defend themselves in the face of discrimination. Ogbobe pointed out that Article 20 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human Rights and the Right of Women in Africa guaranteed the rights of widows. Article 20 of the African Charter on Human Rights stated that “A widow shall have the rights to an equitable share in the inheritance of the property of her husband. “A widow shall have the right to continue to live in the matrimonial house. “In case of remarriage, she shall retain her right if the house belongs to her or she inherited it.” Apart from the Charter, Ogbode added that the Holy Bible also upheld the rights of widows in Numbers 27 v 1-9, where God empowered women to have inheritance of father or husband. Ogbode, however, stressed that women in the South East must be courageous, if the campaign against the negative widowhood practices, and other forms of discrimination, is to be successful.