By Jerome-Mario Utomi
In 2011, the United Nations introduced the concept of International Widows’ Day to ensure that widows are treated equal to other women in the society. International Widows’ Day 2022 is observed to highlight the voices of widows and to take steps towards the recognition of their basic rights. However, while the global community celebrates this day, back here in Nigeria, there exist one particular sin we all commit in the name of culture, and must all share in its guilt. This sin cuts across ethnic/tribal diversities and religious inclinations. It predates the nation’s independence and remains nourished till the present time. This particular sin in fact has to do with violations of women particularly the widows and children’s rights in the name of culture.
It persists despite the existence of the Child Rights Act coupled with the fact that on the 25 May 2015, President Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) bill into law. This is after the Senate had on May 5 2015, passed the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015 into law. Among other provisions, the law prohibits female circumcision or genital mutilation, forceful ejection from home and harmful widowhood practices. It prohibits abandonment of spouse, children and other dependents without sustenance, battery and harmful traditional practices. The VAPP provides a legislative and legal framework for the prevention of all forms of violence against vulnerable persons, especially women and girls. This is a happy ending for a 14 year advocacy and passed through the three regimes of the National Assembly. The law also prohibits economic abuse, forced isolation and separation from family and friends, substance attack, depriving persons of their liberty, incest, indecent exposure, among others. It also intends to eliminate violence in private and public life and provide maximum protection and effective remedies for victims of violence, and punishment of offenders. Looking at these spiraling provisions, the question that is as important as the law itself is; How far have we fared as a nation in keeping to these laws and its provisions? Also, from the above accounts, it is obvious that the nation urgently needs a higher level of initiative and creativity to address the ethnicity challenges, confront brutal forces against human rights violations in the country and secure the masses while revitalizing the nation’s economy. The above revelation becomes more meaningful when one remembers that justice is more of external actions than interior emotions or passions; that it is rendering to each person what is properly his or hers; what is equal, fair and balanced in any relationship. And most importantly, we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other person
Without minding what others may say if this change of heart is adopted in our society, it will not only herald something new that will help curb this inhuman act against vulnerable people, but announce a civil society where justice and love shall reign supreme. There is another thing quite closely related to this. The tendency to ignore this call is always high because while many will view it as a dangerous fiction without merit, others may see nothing wrong in those acts describing it as but mere cultural practices. Ironically, from what sociologists are saying, culture is that realm of ends expressed in art, literature, religion, and morals for which at best we live.
This definition, no doubt puts denial of woman’s rights to inheritance of late husband’s property as a direct opposite of culture. Very instructive, one point most people who are hooked onto this act particularly the violations of widows rights fails to remember is that there is an amazing democracy about death. ‘It is not aristocracy for some of the people, but a democracy for all of the people. Kings die and beggars die; rich men die and poor men die; old people and young people die; death comes to the innocent and it comes to the guilty- death is an irreducible common denominator of all men’’. Indeed, it is always easy to observe that something is seriously wrong with our social system, also very smooth to announce that this human tragedy is happening not by accident, but by a programme of planned inequality, Very regrettably, it is difficult to admit that we are all involved in this alliance for injustice. To explain, we have as a people at different times and places witnessed widows go through these social pangs and maintained silence.
Curiously, media practitioners have seen culture lately gone the wrong way but assumed it’s the right thing, watched the traditional rulers redefine culture in the image of their actions, but viewed it as normal. The practitioners have overtly become more cautious than courageous in their reportage of wicked cultural practices. This failure of the media to study the cultural failures and inform the masses has in recent years resulted in situations where traditional rulers persuaded their subjects to endorse and applaud cultural practices that were harmful to their lives and existence. The Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and faith-based groups, formerly known for educating the masses, no longer see themselves as problem-solvers or watchdogs of society. Rather, they now assume a high ground they do not understand, leaving the masses that initially depended on them confused. Government has become the greatest culprit of these injustices against widows and other less privileged people by their inability to provide; good health care facilities, accessible and qualitative education, non-funding of social housing, non-availability of minimum wage protection for the widows, no welfare benefits for the poor and vulnerable people, no unemployment protection, no women shelters or adequate child care centres or laws that adequately defend the rights of widows.
To reverse this trend, the most important instrument to achieve this lies in government willingness to fully domesticate and enforce 1995 Beijing Declaration. The declaration among other things upholds the universal human rights and other international human right instruments, in particular, the convention on the elimination of forms of discriminations against women, the convention on the rights of the child, as well as the declaration on the elimination of violence against women and the declaration on the rights to development. It also ensures the full implementation of human rights of women and girl child as inalienable, integral and indivisible parts of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
It will also be rewarding if our school libraries are equipped with cultural materials, so that students can carry out research and get valuable information that will help promote, protect and preserve our culture objective for posterity.
While the media, the CSO’s and faith-based groups are encouraged to speak against injustices, another urgent imperative for the government is to recognize that failure to take care of the widows, the orphans and other less privileged will lead to many children taken to the streets. And as we know, the streets are reputed for breeding all sorts of criminals and other social misfits who constitute the real threats in forms of armed robbers, thugs, drug abusers, drunkards, prostitutes and all other social ills that give a bad name to society. Very instructive, we should develop a ‘war room’ using our resolve and powers to fight the undemocratic and criminal tendencies in our consciences in order to usher in a truly egalitarian nation we all yearn for. This pivotal step must be taken.
To make this enduring as well as bear the expected fruit, let us commence first by restructuring ourselves as a people. No matter how beautiful a policy appears, no matter how strong an institution tends to be, we always have deconstructionists who can undermine it. Bearing this in mind, our primary concern should be to work out modalities for instituting a reorientation plan that will erase the unpatriotic tendencies in us as well as usher in a robust nation.
Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos, writes via: [email protected]
