WIDOWHOOD PRACTICES IMPLICATION AND RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN NIGERIA: NEEDFOR INTERVENTION.

FRANCES OPUBO IDONIBOYEOBU; GEORGY OBIECHINA

WIDOWHOOD PRACTICES IMPLICATION AND RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN NIGERIA: NEEDFOR INTERVENTION.

FRANCES OPUBO IDONIBOYEOBU, GEORGY OBIECHINA

Abstract

Widowhood practices in developing Country Nigeria have been detrimental to women’s general well-being and as such considered a serious social problem.Several Nigerian women are subjected to various harmful traditional practices in the name of widowhood rites. These often result in the violation of their human rights. This paper examines widowhood practicesimplications and rights of women in Nigeria: need for intervention. It conceptualized widowhood, health and human right. The paper particularly looked at the physical, psychologically, economic and social health implications of widowhood practices, human right violations and the need for interventions to alleviate the sufferings of widows and to free them from all forms of abuses. It also describes the situation of the widows who suffer cruel and dehumanizing cultural and ritual practices as a mourning process for their dead husbands. It concluded with the following suggestions among others as qualitative education for the girl-child at early stage, enlightenment programmes, Religious organizations to assist widows during and after the demise of their husbands and should continue to preach equality between both sexes so that women will not be treated as slaves and vocational skills acquisition for all women, particularly widows, as means of reducing, if not totally eradicated the harmful traditional rites, rituals, unjust discrimination and inhuman treatments against widows and the generality of women.

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