The over four thousand widows who converged at Ikom Township Stadium on Thursday, June 23, to highlight their plight during the International Day for the Widows, complained that they are not only now married to poverty, but that they are being forcefully ejected from their late husbands’ homes, stigmatised as ‘husband- killers’ and abandoned even by their own families.
The widows, from across the eighteen local government areas of the state, also bemoaned employment problem facing them, the lack of medical care leading to untimely death of most of them.
Mrs. Lydia Ebunta, the Cross River State chairman of the National Association of Widows, who spoke on their behalf said “Governments come and go but the existence of widow in our society is a horrible nightmare because each passing day, the widow kingdom suffers violence in the hands of those who govern them, but we are today going on our knees to take our kingdom”.
“The widows,” their chairman said, “demand the passage of the Widows Rights Act nationally to better the lot of members as the case in Enugu and Anambra States; Want employment for all able and willing widows and their children, free education for all our children at all levels, and government to ensure that political office holders must sacrifice a percentage of their constituency allowance to the widows and not just use our children as thugs during elections and abandon them thereafter” .
Speaking, the facilitator of the celebration, Mrs. Ima Asa Adegoke, said she had the opportunity to come across the widows and their plight during the 2011 elections while campaigning to be governor of the state under the platform of LABOUR Party in Cross River State before the Court of Appeal judgment which elongated Senator Imoke’s tenure.
“God gave me the extra privilege to hear your stories, how you sit on mat for one year without taking your bath, some made to drink water washed from your dead husband’s body to prove your innocence, how some of you are willing to sell your bodes for a loaf of bread, I tell you I am taking your fight from now and with God on our side we shall win”.
She said her Foundation along with other non-governmental organizations will present bill to the Cross River State House of Assembly for the enactment of a Widows Right Act. “As I speak to you now, I have the Enugu State Widows Right Act, though this does not go far enough but it is a start on which we shall build on in Cross River State and I hope the Assembly shall act fast and pass the bill, because if the try to frustrate the bill, they have given me a weapon on which I shall become the governor of the state because this affects the lives of our people”.
According to Mrs. Nsa Adegoke, if the fight for the rights of the widow is the only thing that she shall fight for to ensure they are not denied their rights further, then, she shall not shy away from it. “You should look forward to a new dawn, I have set up a foundation to take up your fight, and this will start with a Bill in the Cross River State House of Assembly to enact a Widows Rights Act and that shall be done very soon” she told the women who danced around her as she spoke.
Pastor Tony Bassey, the Coordinator of the widows in the state said he has registered over ten thousand widows and in 2012, he will make sure that all widows who are not registered are registered.
“God gave me this call in 2000 while I was in Katsina and in 2003 I went fully into coordinating the widows and the first group of widows I gathered were just thirteen and since then I have over then thousand widows,” he disclosed.
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