WIDOWED AND DISPOSSESSED: The Economic Toll of Harmful Widowhood Rites in Nigeria's South-East and North ~ By Onyekachi Augustus Nwaozor, Ph.D
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The first cruelty often begins before the burial. In parts of Imo and Anambra, a woman who has just lost her husband may have her hair forcibly shaved, be confined to a room, or be made to sit on the bare floor while relatives decide what remains of her life. In Sokoto, some widows face a quieter but equally devastating loss: eviction from homes they helped build and shared for decades.
Across Nigeria’s South-East and parts of the North, harmful widowhood practices are no longer only rituals of mourning. They have become instruments of economic dispossession. Land, houses, shops, savings and even children are contested the moment a husband dies, leaving many widows poor, homeless and dependent on the very relatives who pushed them out.
In several Igbo communities, mourning was traditionally understood as a period of respect, purification and communal solidarity. But the practices attached to it have often crossed into humiliation. Reports from Imo State describe widows being compelled to shave their heads, swear at shrines, remain in seclusion, or drink water used to wash a deceased husband’s corpse to prove innocence.
The deeper injury, however, is financial. A widow may be accused of causing the death, denied access to her husband’s accounts, prevented from entering the family compound, or told that she has no right to his land because she bore no son. In some cases, relatives seize the property while the widow is still observing mourning rites.
A woman in one documented case lost her husband, a police inspector, only for her late husband’s sister to chase her from the family house and order her back to her father’s home because she had no child for the deceased. Her grief had barely settled before her home, security and means of survival were taken from her.
Such stories repeat with painful regularity. In Ogidi, Anambra State, researchers and journalists have recorded mourning periods lasting up to a year, during which widows were restricted to the house, made to sit on the bare floor for weeks and required to keep their heads shaved. What appears externally as custom can, in practice, become a system that weakens a woman at the exact moment she is most vulnerable.
The economic dimension has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Where urban expansion, road construction, commercial farming and rising land values have made family land more valuable, disputes over inheritance have intensified. A widow’s presence can become an obstacle to relatives who want unrestricted control of a deceased man’s property.
In Imo, investigations have found that property confiscation, deprivation and forceful eviction are explicitly recognised among harmful widowhood practices under Section 17(2) of the state’s Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law. The law also prohibits compulsory shaving of hair, forced swearing at shrines, taking a widow’s children without consent, and forcing her into seclusion.
This is not merely cultural misunderstanding. It is often calculated dispossession. A widow may be pressured to “release” land for family use, sign documents she does not understand, or surrender title deeds to male relatives. Once she leaves the matrimonial home, reclaiming property becomes expensive, slow and socially isolating.
The pattern is not confined to the South-East. In Sokoto, Hajia Asma’u Malami, widow of former Nigerian Ambassador to South Africa, Alhaji Shehu Malami, went to court after her stepson allegedly attempted to evict her from the house where she had lived with her late husband for 45 years. Her case showed that widowhood-related property disputes can affect women across class, religion and region.
For poorer widows, the consequences are harsher. A woman who loses a small shop, a parcel of farmland or a family house may lose her children’s school fees, her food security and her standing in the community at once. Dispossession, therefore, is not a single event; it sets off a long decline into poverty.
Nigeria does not lack laws. What it often lacks is the political will, awareness and institutional follow-through to enforce them.
Anambra State’s Malpractices Against Widows and Widowers (Prohibition) Law of 2005 was an early attempt to confront the problem. It prohibits the maltreatment of widows and widowers and affirms that fundamental rights belong to every widow or widower. The law also states that a widow or widower should not be forcibly dispossessed of property acquired or used by the couple during the deceased spouse’s lifetime.
The federal Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, signed into law in 2015, and state VAPP laws have strengthened protection further. In Anambra, the 2017 VAPP Law prescribes a maximum of four years’ imprisonment, a fine not exceeding N400,000, or both, for harmful traditional practices. Imo’s VAPP Law similarly names forced shaving, dispossession, eviction and seclusion as offences.
Yet many widows do not know these protections exist. Others fear stigma, threats, spiritual intimidation or complete exclusion from their husband’s family if they report abuse. Police officers, court officials and local leaders may themselves treat the matter as a private family affair rather than a criminal and human-rights violation.
The result is a gap between legal rights and lived reality. A law on paper cannot protect a widow who is locked in a room, denied food, or driven from her home before she can reach a lawyer.
Change has also come from within communities. In Anambra, the state government and traditional institutions have publicly identified harmful widowhood rites and girl-child disinheritance as drivers of violence against women and girls.
The Anambra Council of Traditional Rulers has pledged to eliminate harmful traditional practices, including the disinheritance of widows. The council also committed to codifying communal rules that protect women and girls, and to respecting the Supreme Court position that females have a right to inherit family property whether married or not.
Such interventions matter because customary authority still carries weight in many villages. When a traditional ruler declares that no widow should be shaved, confined, accused of witchcraft or driven from her husband’s house, he changes what relatives believe they can do with impunity.
Anambra’s Speaker has also urged traditional rulers across the state to abolish degrading customs targeting widows, stressing that the law prohibiting widowhood malpractices remains active and enforceable. Public condemnation is not a complete solution, but it gives widows language, legitimacy and local protection.
Legal aid organisations, women’s rights groups and community paralegals are increasingly filling the gap between victims and formal justice.
In Anambra, organisations including the International Federation of Women Lawyers, the National Human Rights Commission, the Legal Aid Council and family-law support centres have worked to end harmful practices against widows. FIDA has used alternative dispute resolution where possible, but provides free legal services when perpetrators refuse to release inherited property or when court action becomes necessary.
Paralegals are especially important in rural communities. They may not always be lawyers, but they understand local customs, can document abuses, explain rights in plain language, accompany widows to police stations or courts, and connect them to legal representation. For a widow who cannot afford a lawyer, that first conversation can determine whether she loses everything or fights back.
Their work is slow and often invisible. It involves sitting with frightened women, persuading reluctant relatives, confronting village heads, gathering documents and pushing cases through systems that were not designed with poor women in mind. But it is producing results: some widows have recovered property, remained in their homes, or negotiated settlements that preserve their dignity.
Behind every legal provision is a woman learning to live after loss. She may have spent years supporting her husband’s business, farming his land, raising his children or maintaining the family home. Yet within days of his death, she can be treated as a stranger.
The psychological harm is severe. Widows describe shame, fear, sleeplessness and the humiliation of being treated as suspects in their husbands’ deaths. Some are pressured to remarry a relative of the deceased; others are denied access to their children.
The economic harm is equally lasting. Without land or income, a widow may become dependent on relatives who earlier dispossessed her. Her daughters may be withdrawn from school. Her sons may grow up believing that their mother’s suffering was normal. In this way, harmful widowhood practices reproduce poverty and gender inequality across generations.
Nigeria cannot claim to protect women’s rights while allowing widows to be stripped of property in the name of culture. Culture should provide comfort in grief, not turn bereavement into economic punishment.
The way forward requires stronger enforcement of the VAPP laws, public education in markets, churches, mosques, town unions and village meetings, and sustained funding for legal aid and paralegal services. Traditional rulers must not only condemn harmful rites but also discipline those who enforce them. Police and courts must treat widow dispossession as a serious offence, not a domestic misunderstanding.
Most importantly, widows must be heard not as victims alone, but as women with rights, memories, labour and claims to justice. Some have already fought back in court. Others have found protection through paralegals, women’s groups and reform-minded traditional rulers.
Their resistance shows that harmful widowhood practices are not unchangeable. They survive because they are permitted to survive. When communities, courts and families refuse to look away, a widow can mourn her husband without losing her home, her land or her future.
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