The maltreatment of widows in Nigeria is increasingly alarming. For Mr. Felix King Eiremiokhae, Founder, Felix King Charity Foundation, engaging custodians of customs in communities will best tackle the challenge. In this interview with Mary Ekah, he reveals how his foundation is achieving this, and why he developed a soft spot for widows and more
What is responsible for the maltreatment of Nigerian widows?
Lack of documentation otherwise called Will. During our last conference in Lagos, most men realised that they needed to see this as important as anything. At that conference, we were able to push the message to people that it could be you and every single person is a potential victim. Will, could help tackle the problem. Before now most men believe you must get to 70 years before you write your will but things have changed. You can write your will now and that does not mean you will die tomorrow.
For instance, if you ask those perpetrating this customs that if you die would you like your brother to inherit everything you have worked for? He will tell you no. So to guard against this type of thing, will is a major deterrent. If we open our hearts to one another, only then this prejudice that is turning widowhood into a catastrophic nightmare in our communities will gradually fade away. I do believe someday no widow will any longer be denied her rights to inheritance, her rights to human right, her rights to economic freedom and the right to child welfare. The Felix King Charity Foundation N30 million widows’ empowerment fund for 2017 registration, as well as screening, is now on to help these widows kick-start a new life. I believe when empowered these widows you automatically secure the future of their children. I am doing this not because I have, but because I know too well what it means not to have.
So what informed your decision to start Felix King Charity Foundation?
The foundation was officially launched in 2015 and this is more of a divine mandate, a mandate to provide succour to vulnerable widows and their children in Nigeria. Because it is a divine mandate, it is God who knows why He gives it to me. However, from personal experience, it is heartbroken once we see what widows in Nigeria go through. And this suffering and maltreatment are made possible by customs and traditions. However, our aim is not only to ameliorate their suffering and agony but also bring their plight to the government and communities and why we should stop it.
What do you mean by personal experience?
What I mean is that this is what we see every day in the society. From one part of the society to another there is always a widow close to us hence the awareness of the inhumane treatment meted on these people. Because customs allowed a lot of these things it is fast becoming unbearable yoke. I believe this defies religion because sometimes people will merge tradition and religion and when you look at religion and human dignity, people with conscience would then start to think that these things are not proper because these widows are one’s mother, sister or daughter. So we believe is something we need to add our voice to and apart from trying to lend our support we think if others begin to condemn this act and desist from practicing them then the aim of ending this obnoxious customs may have come sooner than later.
Apart from creating this awareness, what other things have you done?
When you talk about widowhood in Nigeria the problem is bigger than we think. Statistics show that we have over eight million disadvantaged widows and with an estimated 21 million children. This is a huge epidemic that Nigeria is sitting on. So what we are trying to do is to lend our little support towards reducing their plight. We have set up an empowerment scheme, which is startup trade fund. Through the scheme, hundreds of widows have benefited from it. We help them identity trading opportunity and finance it for them. So it is like giving them hook rather than fish. Each of these women got an average of three hundred and fifty thousand naira (N350, 000) last year to start a business because we believe that once their source of income is guaranteed then the future of their kids is equally secured.
In addition to this, we also believe that children education is very important and unfortunately we also discovered that most of these children have dropped out of school upon the demise of their breadwinners. To ensure most of them go back to school, we have set up a scholarship scheme. Last year, tens of the children were given scholarship and like I said, this is nothing compared to 21 million I stated earlier however we need to start from somewhere. Again, we’ve established medical scheme to support some of these widows’ children and we give them social support in terms of food materials too.
But we did something very profound last year December by instituting a programme solely dedicated to the widows of Police officers. It is easy for people to criticise the Police but the sacrifice they pay is so enormous therefore we did a programme dedicated to the widows of policemen. It was quite insightful because the Police structure does not quite support these widows and their children.
And this year January, we have flagged off the N30 million widows’ empowerment fund, where we will be disbursing money to the widows for those who never benefitted to use to start up their businesses. We have broken them into income groups and at this stage screening and registration are going on and when the process has been completed we start disbursing the fund. It is a nationwide programme but the first phase begins in Edo and Lagos states. This year our priority is on the military and the policemen widows.
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