*Tales of inheritance and widows’ battle for survival
By VIVIAN ONYEBUKWA, KATE HALIM and VERA WISDOM-BASSEY
Life was sweet for Mrs. Ifeoma Ojiri and her three children. They were comfortable, happy and well-taken care by her husband, Mr. Godwin Ojiri, until he died last month.
For this woman who had enjoyed life and the warmth of her husband of many years, nothing prepared her for the shock she received when her husband breathed his last on her laps without premonition.
As the breadwinner of the family, her late husband pampered her and the children with the good things of life. Her children attended the best schools in Festac Town, Lagos where they reside. She was also the envy of her friends as she never lacked things that make women swoon whenever she stepped out.
But little did she know that the last vigil her family held in June would be the last time she would pray with her husband. Death came like a thief in the night and stole her joy away.
Her husband, who was the General Overseer of one of the popular churches in Festac Town and CEO of many companies, had been ill for a while and as the GO of a church, the responsibility of praying for his members rest sorely on him. Also, he was responsible for his family until death struck.
On the fateful night he died, he felt weak as prayers were being made and pleaded with his wife that he should go back into his bedroom to rest. He had planned to continue with the family prayers afterwards but that would be the last request he would make from her as he died afterwards.
After he had gone to rest for a while, his wife decided to check on him only to find out that he was breathing heavily, she quickly called on elders of the church to take him to the hospital, but before they could get to the hospital while still lying on the wife’s lap, singing and praising God as they went along, he passed on.
After the initial shock of her husband’s death, she was in for another unpleasant period of her life when her late husband’s relations went after his properties. They were hard on her trail to produce the certificates of his many companies, claiming they wanted to do some verification about his many assets, but she wisely refused.
Even the mandatory wake–keep for the deceased has not been conducted. His corpse was still in the morgue as demands were being made by his brother to take over his company. Mrs. Ojiri quickly called the family lawyer to intimate him on the happenings around her and he quickly went into action.
Even with the lawyer’s timely intervention, the deceased’s relatives were not satisfied with the situation of things. After the burial of their brother, they were still pressurising his widow to hand over the keys of her late husband’s cars to them, including keys to his house in the village.
Mrs. Ojiri noted that everything happening to her was like a bad dream that she wished to wake up from. ‘’I was still mourning my husband and my in-laws are only concerned about the properties that they can lay their hands on. They don’t care about my well-being and that of the children my late husband left behind.’’
Another woman, Mrs. Nkechi Uzo lost her husband earlier this year in a car accident. The mother of five cried her eyes out because she knew what will befall her after the husband’s demise. Her in-laws were not on friendly terms with her while he was alive and she just knew they would deal with her when her husband departed this world.
While the body of her late husband was being taken to the mortuary, his sister demanded for the share certificates of the company shares he had bought over the years. But because Mrs. Uzo was swift in moving some vital documents out of their home, her in-laws became upset.
Afterwards, they came to their house, took all of her late husband’s clothes, his cars and started threatening her to relinquish all his properties to them because it is theirs by right, being her husband’s relatives. They eventually succeeded in throwing her and her children out of the house she built with her husband in the village.
She had to attend her husband’s burial from her family house, just to pay her last respect to the father of her children, and this was done under heavy security. Even her children kept asking why their uncles and aunties were punishing her, but she had no answers for them.
Right now, the little money she had saved from her business is not enough to sustain herself and her children. She withdrew them from the schools they were attending to a public school because of funds.
Regina Obodoeche, the widow of late Echezina Obodoeche of Irifite, South-east Nigeria, was accused by her in-laws of complicity in the fatal motor accident that took her husband’s life last year. After the burial in the village, she was detained in solitary confinement in a hut.
The conditions were inhuman as she was forced to drink water used to wash her late husband’s body, as proof of her innocence, as well as being starved. Obodoeche’s in laws justified it as part of the three-month traditional mourning period for widows.
“It appears God, and the laws, have turned their backs on me and my children,” the widow lamented, a double penalty of death and cultural inheritance laws that saw her fall from being a multiple property owner to living in a make-shift shack made of wood.
“We are destitute. I married my late husband 17 years ago when he had nothing, but now, his wealth is attracting his relatives who have disinherited my two teenage daughters and I of properties I toiled with him to acquire.”
When Obodoeche returned to Lagos after the mourning period was over, she discovered that her husband’s relatives had sold off the family house, cars and other properties jointly acquired by her and her husband.
Assets including a building and other properties were confiscated. Local custom laws were used to dispossess both the widow and her daughters, without their knowledge. Obodoeche’s story and that of others are common and typify the fate of many women made widows prematurely.
Ironically, disinheritance was enforced and supervised by matriarchs, who internalise power and legitimise male narratives about women, as a means of retaining leadership positions.
Widowhood in Nigeria
Many traditions in Nigeria regarding widows are aimed at intimidating, subduing and humiliating women as a way of sustaining the culture of obedience, rendering them perpetually subservient.
Many women in several Nigerian communities dread the experience of widowhood. This is not because of the pain arising from the loss of their husbands, but more so, as a result of the numerous dehumanising rituals and practices associated with widowhood.
In many cultures, widowhood is associated with trauma. It presents an immeasurable effect of economic, social and psychological feelings on the person involved. It is a life event with wide range of consequences. The deprivation following loss of spousal intimacy through death is devastating for many widows.
The issue of mourning and widowhood processes in Nigeria is surrounded by a number of cultural expectations. It has been observed that widowhood in Nigeria is seen as an immoral or unpleasant situation which allocates to the widows a position of societal scorn, disdain and membership of the wretched of the earth.
In some cultures, there is also restriction of movement, limited association with other people, shaving of the hair and sometimes drinking the water used to bath the corpse of her late husband to prove her innocence in his demise. Widowhood rites differ across different tribes and ethnic groups in Nigeria and there are over 250 ethic identities in the country. Some of the harmful practices include confinement, defacement, disinheritance, ritual cleansing, and discrimination.
The major challenge widows’ face is that of disinheritance. More often than not, these endangered species are stripped completely of their husbands’ assets by their families. It matters little if the properties in question were jointly owned by the couple.
In such a circumstance, the woman, especially if she happens to be a full time housewife will become economically disempowered and would then graduate to a destitute as she will find it increasingly difficult to fend for herself and her children, especially if they are still very young.
This act of confiscating and denying women inheritance has cut short many widows’ lives as they become stressed, sick and ultimately die prematurely if they are not helped out of poverty on time.
It is easier to deprive widows of their inheritance if the marriage is contracted under native laws and customs, especially when the husband dies intestate, that is, without a will, a statement of what somebody wants to happen to his or her property after he or she dies, or a legal document containing this statement.
The widow may also lose out of benefiting from her husband’s pension savings, gratuity, insurance claim, bank savings and other financial investments if she is not made the next-of -kin in the records of those transactions.
Consequences of disinheriting widows
The ripple effect of harmful widowhood practices is that it affects the children of the deceased as the destiny of many of them may be truncated if they do not have anyone to assist them through schools or acquisition of life skills after the death of their fathers. More so, if the children are still at tender age or in their formative years.
In many cases, when widows are disinherited, their children suffer untold hardship. This is even made worse if their mothers are housewives without a means of income when they lose their husbands.
Many of these children have dropped out of school because their father’s money and properties have been taken over by their uncles and as a result, they can no longer continue their education.
Assets
Nigeria’s constitution, supported by international law, emphasises equal rights for women. But paper rights are difficult to realise in societies where inequality is a long standing tradition, with men largely confirming that assets of women are ceded to the husband on marriage.
Institutions where women and widows are instructed to seek redress and justice, regarding inheritance issues are scenes of contention between paper rights (as enshrined by law) and ‘living laws’ (internalised by culture).
Despite this, women fight on through the courts, using three available systems: the regular court, customary court, or the sharia court, depending on whether the marriage was solemnised under the Marriage Act 1990 (statutory), Native Law and Custom, or Islamic Law.
Nigerian law recognises two forms of property inheritance on death: testate (where there is a written will) and intestate (where there is no written will). Nigerian women face the most challenges under intestate inheritance matters as testate inheritance is relatively straight forward.
Wills and inheritance
In Nigeria, the culture of writing a will is weak, not only in rural areas where socio-cultural inequalities and illiteracy are high, but also among the literate and well-informed.
Most inheritance conflicts brought to the court, concerning widows, are handled by the customary courts under native laws. Customary courts are presided over by magistrates and mostly, elderly members of society, who are not lawyers and therefore, lack any formal legal experience.
Inheritance systems in Nigeria are predominantly patrilineal, and are generally based on applicable customs and traditions of the deceased’s ancestral community, irrespective of his residence or where his estate is located.
Different strokes
Interpretations vary in accordance with the custom and tradition of a people. Under the Yoruba customary law, children share equally from their father’s estate regardless of sex on his death intestate. A widow has no right of inheritance in her deceased husband’s estate, as she forms part of the estate of her husband and can also be inherited by a relative of her late husband.
It is a well settled rule of native law and custom of the Yoruba people that a wife could not inherit her husband’s property since she herself is, like a chattel, to be inherited by a relative of her husband.
The Islamic Law of inheritance applies in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria. Under the law, wives and daughters are entitled to participate in the sharing of the estate of their deceased husband or father. When there are children or other descendants, the widow’s portion is an eighth of the deceased estate. A woman without any child inherits a quarter of the deceased husband’s estate.
Under Igbo Customary Law, in the past, only male children inherit their late father’s property on his death to the exclusion of the females and widow. The first son inherits his late father’s estate and could devolve to his siblings, at his discretion.
Where there is no son, the deceased’s eldest brother or male relative inherits. Where the deceased is a polygamist and has many sons from several wives, the eldest sons of each of the wives may take part in sharing of the estate. But given the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that female children have equal rights to inherit their father’s properties, the tides have changed but not completely. Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, who read the lead judgment, held that “no matter the circumstances of the birth of a female child, such a child is entitled to an inheritance from her later father’s estate. Consequently, the Igbo customary law, which disentitles a female child from partaking in the sharing of her deceased father’s estate is breach of Section 42 (1) and (2) of the Constitution, a fundamental rights provision guaranteed to every Nigerian.”
International Widows’ Day
June 23 of every year has been set aside by the United Nations as International Widow’s Day. The UN General Assembly declared 23rd June 2011 as the first-ever International Widows’ Day to give special recognition to the situation of widows of all ages and across regions and cultures.
According to the international organisation, “absent in statistics, unnoticed by researchers, neglected by national and local authorities and mostly overlooked by civil society organisations – the situation of widows is, in effect, invisible.
Yet abuse of widows and their children constitutes one of the most serious violations of human rights and obstacles to development today. Millions of the world’s widows endure extreme poverty, ostracism, violence, homelessness, ill health and discrimination in law and custom.”
Statistics
There are estimated 259 million widows around the world with a sizeable number of them in underdeveloped and conflict-prone environment. It is difficult to have accurate statistics of widows in Nigeria as nobody seems to be tracking it. However, the number will be in millions.
NGOs chart the way forward
Mrs. Gozie Udemezue, founder, Healing Hearts Widows Support Foundation said that it is difficult for widows to achieve good life. This is because many widows in Nigeria have no right to inheritance. Upon the death of their husbands, Udemezue who is also a widow noted that many widows are completely disposed or chased away with their children into a lonely world of hunger, pains and uncertainty by their in-laws.
She added that many Nigerian widowhood practices drastically reduce the economic status of widows upon the death of a husband leaving the woman to face difficulties and hardship that will in turn affect the upbringing of the children.
She noted that the rights of women in Nigeria, where they are more often than not seen as part of their husbands’ estate and written wills are frowned upon, take a turn for the worse upon the death of their spouses.
Lady Patience Izebu is President, Widow’s Mite Women Empowerment Organisation. She has been championing the cause of widows and fatherless children since 2009.
She said that the solution to the issue of disinheriting widows is for women to be to be well-equipped, empowered to the point that they will not depend on people to feed and send their children to school when their spouses die.
She frowned at the many instances where widows are accused of killing their husbands. Most times, the in-laws seize the opportunity to dispossess them of their possessions and nothing would happen. Nobody will question them; neither will the offenders be punished. They call it upholding our culture and tradition.
‘’It is heartless that people take advantage of widows and treat them like animals. This can only be corrected if we all bear at the back of our minds that they are humans like us and should be treated as such. Nigerians should put themselves in the shoes of these women and give them a reason to live and smile again.
“It is high time something drastic is done to halt these harmful cultural practices. Government, civil society organisations, culture icons, opinion moulders; traditional rulers and religious leaders need to embark on comprehensive sensitisation campaigns against these obnoxious and archaic practices.
“Men should learn to write Will so that their family will be legally guided on the sharing of their estates. They should also make their spouses their Next-of-Kin to avoid situations that will leave their wives and children disinherited in the event of their deaths.
Economic empowerment of their wives should also be of utmost importance. The starting point here is even to have those who are illiterates trained up in formal education. This will make them aware of their rights, even as widows.”
In her response, Dr. (Mrs.) Jane Francis Duru, Executive Director, Gender Care Initiative, commended the Supreme court ruling. According to her, “It is a very positive development in improving the right of women in inheritance in Igbo land. It was unfortunate in Igbo land women are not allowed to inherit property. With this, women can now invest in property and register in their names. It is a very laudable development in Igbo land and Nigeria in general.
Mrs. Evelyn Agwunobi, President, United Umuada, Lagos branch, and National President, Abba Autonomous Communities Development Union, Women’s wing, said “I am totally in support of that judgment because sometimes in the family, there could be a wayward child and can’t control the father’s estate, and the female child/children are the ones that are able to handle the estate, and later nothing would be given to the girl child when they want to share property.”