Last Saturday, the Rejoice Tabitha Widows Support Foundation assembled over 80 widows at the Cultural Centre, Ibadan, Oyo State to provide them with financial empowerment as well as health and legal education as a way of easing their pain and enhancing their standard of living by making them well-informed of their basic rights and how to engage themselves productively to meet their basic needs and that of their children.
In her address at the empowerment programme, the coordinator of the foundation, MrsOlanikeOlasupo, said the Non-Governmental Organisation was founded in 2015 and has in the last seven years positively impacted the lives of no fewer than 30 widows across the state.
Olasupo said the foundation, birthed with the vision to stand by widows in a bid to lessen their pain and grief, has since its inception been providing financial empowerment and organising periodic seminars and workshops for widows across the state, in addition to building training centres and providing legal interventions for the widows in cases of injustice.
She added that: “Today, with God’s guidance, we are making another bold and decisive step through this one-day seminar which we have organised for our widows. While we remain assured that God Almighty will give us the wisdom to accomplish this work in Jesus name, we are using this opportunity to formally appeal to both the federal and state government through the Ministry of Women Affairs to make widows’ plights a top priority in their policy formulation and implementation. To further ease the burden of the widows under our care, we hereby solicit financial support from corporate organisations, philanthropists and faith-based bodies.”
While educating the widows on their basic rights, a legal practitioner, Mathew Omobode, from Legal Aid Network, said: “There are quite a number of rights that widows should know of, though some of the rights have certain factors that underpin them. Basically, widows have rights of remarriage, rights of custody of children, right of access to and manage the husbands’ properties, rights of remain in the husband’s house after his death, but like I said, the rights are subjected to some factors, one of which is the nature of the marriage that occurred between the widow and her husband, whether it is a legal one or other types.
“The basic fact is that most times what people call marriage is not marriage, in the face of law, but co-habitation, no customary rites or marriage in line with customs and tradition, which is also recognized to some extent by law. People will just cohabit and start having children. And then, they both will grow old and their children will become adults. But that is not marriage, but cohabitation. And this is a key determinant factor which proves whether the widow is a wife to the deceased or not.
He said for widows that were not legally married to the father of their children, benefiting from the existing fundamental rights may not be easy, but that for those that were legally married to their departed husbands, but are being subjected to inhuman treatments from their in-laws, accessing the legal rights are feasible.
DrBibilolaOladeji, a consultant psychiatrist at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, in her own health talk at the programme, said widowhood comes with loneliness, but every widow should engage herself productively to avoid being idle for the loneliness to creep in.
The consultant noted that since a study conducted in Harvard has proven that loneliness can make someone die earlier than expected, having close confiding relationships is very important for women not long after the demise of their husbands.
She added that there is also the need for women especially widows to avoid toxic relationships and friendships in their bid to avoid loneliness, just as she advised the widows to always be part of educative programmes, while Mrs Cecilia Oyafajo, in her own speech, encouraged the widows to put and build their faith in God as He is the only one that can genuinely uphold them in every ramification.
At the end of the various speech presentations, each of the attending widows was giving an undisclosed sum of money with food items.
One of the widows at the programme, MrsRomokeOlasupo while speaking with Sunday Tribune, said the programme has enlightened her on better ways to train her children and actively engage herself so as to financially meet the needs of her children.
Another widow, Rita Lamidi said aside from benefiting from the programme, God, through the help of the foundation, was able to fight for her before her in-laws, who almost threw her out of her husband’s house after his death.
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