Women in Anambra on Thursday in Awka staged a peaceful protest against what they termed “`barbaric widowhood practices’’.
They demanded the stoppage of the ritual where widows were forced to drink from the water with which their spouses were bathed preparatory to burial.
The protesters were led by Ms Hope Okoye, chairperson of the agency on Violence against Persons Prohibition Act in Anambra.
They gathered at the Children, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Court in Awka to register the protest and support a plaintiff whose relevant case was being heard.
A brother-in-law of the plaintiff had forced the widow to drink from the water with which her spouse was bathed before burial.
The protesters carried placards with inscriptions such as: “Allow our widows some peace’’; “Stop All obnoxious laws and harmful widowhood practices in Anambra’’.
Okoye told newsmen that it was time Anambra government paid attention to the practice and end it so as to protect the girl child and women from harmful practices.
She called on community leaders, particularly at Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra to end all forms of harmful practices against women and widows.
“We demand that government ensures that justice is served on perpetrators of unpleasant widowhood practices against the girl child, women and widows, irrespective of their social status.
“The practice is not limited to Ogbaru communities as it has been observed that other parts of Anambra still perform the ritual,’’ she said.
In her remarks, one of the women leaders, Mrs Eucharia Anaekwe, said she once led sensitisation campaigns to various communities in Anambra to end the practice.
“I am so shocked that Atani community in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra still engages in the practice,’’ she said.
Another leader of the protesters, Mrs Ugochi Freeman called on youths in Anambra to lend their voices to the call for the abolition of the practice in their various communities.
Freeman stressed that efforts to abolish traditional harmful practices should be accentuated by youths as future leaders who would become mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, spouses and in-laws of other people.
