By Augustine Okezie
The Rock of Ages Empowerment Foundation which was founded by Evangelist Ignatius Newman Ezeigbo in 2010, primarily established to cater for the widows by empowering them financially and engaging them in poverty eradication activities, is one outstanding non-governmental organisation that is perfectly charting the way forward for every widow in Nigeria.The Foundation recently hosted widows in Abuja to mark the International Widows’ Day.
In the words of Evangelist Newman, “our Foundation will go beyond alleviating poverty, but dealing with it from the root to make the women financially independent and remain in charge of their various means of livelihood”.
The International Widows’ Day which was introduced to address poverty and injustice faced by widows and their children in many countries was officially recognized by the United Nations in 2010 and is observed annually on June 23.
The first officially recognized International Widows’ Day was marked on June 23, with a conference held in the United Nations headquarters in New York. International Widows’ Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
The Widows’ Day was initiated by the Loomba Foundation in 2005. The plight of widows world-wide has been the Foundation’s focus since it was established in 1997. According to its founder, Raj Loomba, women in many countries experience great hardship after their husbands die. The observance falls on June 23 because Loomba’s mother became a widow on that date in 1954.
Rock of Ages, according to its founder, is crafted alongside the dreams and aspirations of the Loomba Foundation with a commitment to empowering widows and to eradicate poverty, alleviate their plights and to assistthem also in legal matters.
The foundation had built houses for widows and had as well taken legal actions to enforce widows’ rights and their fundamental human rights
During this year’s celebration over 140 units of sewing machines valued at N25,000.00 each were distributed to 140 widows who had undergone training under the supervision of the Foundation, another set of 136 widows were equally given the sum of N20,000.00 each to start small scale catering services, having undergone the training.
The widows were equally promised 1,200 bags of rice as monthly empowerment for widows and other vulnerable groups with soft funding of N10,000.00 each for those outside the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) while those within the FCT meet twice in a month. The Foundation has so far empowered about 5,000 widows since inception with various skill acquisitions.
In 2011, about 1,000 widows were given bags of semovita, cartons of Indomie noodles, free medical treatment for blood pressure, diabetes; malaria and typhoid fever with N10,000.00 each for petty trading.
In 2012, 440 widows received N4.4million to set up small and medium scale enterprises and not less than 3,500 bags of rice, among other food items, were distributed to them as well as free medical treatment.
In 2013, about N11million was given out to 3,560 widows after undergoing training in various skill acquisition programmes. There has been monthly distribution of various food items, free medical treatment; clothing materials and wrappers.
In an apparent indictment of government on the obvious neglect of the plight of the widows, Evangelist Newman called on both the government and the larger society to join the cause of widowhood by initiating programmes and projects that are aimed at ameliorating their plights.
He said, “There should be policies and programmes that will take care of the overall welfare of widows and other vulnerable groups in the society. There should be enlightenment programmes on issues relating to their health, as most of these women die of diseases that could have been averted assuming that those diseases were detected early.
“The Federal Ministry of Health should take up the primary health care services to where these women can have easy access to them at a highly subsidized rate.
“The federal government should as well set up skill acquisition centres where these women would undergo various training with a view to making them self-reliant. Government should equally ensure that these programmes and services actually get to the targeted audience”.
Acknowledging the pace setting effort of the NGO, who took it upon themselves to recognize and celebrate this group who are an integral part of every society yet, little is known about them and the challenges they face, the Minister of Women Affairs, Hajiya Zainab Maina, lamented that the neglect of the widows was most disturbing.
“They are seldom captured in statistics, unnoticed by researchers, often neglected by laws and development strategies making their situation invisible”, she said.
Stakeholders who participated in marking the International Widows’ Day were united in their views that government is guilty of neglecting the welfare of a greater population of the widows by the absence of a functional policy for them and the non participation of government in any private initiatives arranged for them.
Okezie wrote from Abuja
