The Governor Samuel Ortom-led state executive council has sent a bill to establish the Benue State Widows Commission and to prohibit harmful practices against widows to the state’s House of Assembly.
The bill also seeks to make laws to protect the widows from exploitative acts, punish offenders and for other related purposes.
The state Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mike Inalegwu, while briefing journalists in Makurdi, said the decision of the Ortom administration to enact the law was premised on the fact that there are several ethnic groups in the state with diverse cultural norms and practices which negatively impact widows upon the death of their husbands.
He said such ill practices include but are not limited to disinheritance from the assets of a deceased husband, banishment from a late husband’s home, being forced to marry a relation of the deceased husband, among other things.
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Inalegwu said the council viewed that, in some cases, a widow is likened to a property of the deceased to be inherited by his relations, adding that most often, such widows have children for the deceased and have the task of nurturing the children without any assistance from the relations of the deceased.
He posited that in some instances, some are denied their fundamental rights enshrined in the 1999 Constitution and that it was in the face of such a helpless situation of widows that the Ortom administration initiated the bill.
Inalegwu also stated that when the bill becomes law, an offender would be made to pay the sum of N500,000 or be jailed for seven months.
