Rock of Ages Empowerment Foundation (RAEF), has called on government at all levels to come up with laws and policies to protect windows from barbaric cultures.
RAEF, while celebrating the 2020 International Widows Day (IWD) with the theme: “I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights”, said when laws were put in place to protect them and their children, they would be secured.
IWD is a United Nations (UN) ratified day of action to address the poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their dependents across the globe.
The founder of RAEF, Mr. Ignatius Newman, while speaking at the occasion, which also marked the 10th anniversary of the foundation, said there must be laws to protect women and the girl child.
Mr. Newman said, “Widows are going through a lot in the hands of relatives because government is yet make favourable laws that will protect their interests. If the laws are in place, nobody will come and chase any widow out of the house all in the name of husband’s relative or tell a widow to drink water they used to bath the husband’s corpse to prove her innocence that she is not responsible for the husband’s death.
“We have seen many times where a man died and family members snatched all the property from the woman and chased the woman and her children out of the house; leaving them to start living in struggle and pain.”
The Director of Gender Affairs at the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hanatu Aliyu, urged the widows to be more self-reliant in all they had been empowered to do.
About 3,000 widows from the six area councils of the FCT were part of the event at Pyakasa, near Lugbe, along Airport Road, Abuja.
One of the beneficiaries, Esther Tahu, thanked the foundation for giving her N50,000 to start business, saying it had helped her in so many ways, adding that her children were back to school and that her business was thriving.
The widows received palliatives to cushion the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on their lives.
