Group rejects anti-widow practices in S’East

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 on Thursday 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 widows to seek redress in court whenever they were subjected to unfair widowhood practices.

A member of the group, 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 were based on culture and traditional beliefs.

The group said widowhood practices included the shaving of a widow’s hair, eyebrows and pubic hair when her husband dies. It also said they included forcing a widow to sit on bare floor during the mourning period and forcing a widow to wear mourning clothes for a year.

The group said other practices included chasing a widow away from her husband’s house for not having a male child and forcing a widow to drink water used in washing the late husband’s body where it was suspected that she killed her husband.

Ugwu added that in some communities, the widow is forced to sleep with a fetish high priest in order to separate the spirit of the dead husband from the wife.

She said that despite the physical and psychological trauma involved in the travails widows were made to go through after the death of their husbands, 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 described the practices as primitive, stressing that they had no place in the 21st Century.

Chairman of the Aku Diewa Lawyers Forum, Chijioke Ogbobe, said widows should not shy away from going to court to defend themselves in the face of discrimination.