Mrs. Theresa Ohumaegbulem is the founder of TESCAM WOMEN SUPPORT INITIATIVE, a Non-Governmental and Not for profit organization aimed at empowering widows and orphans. In this interview with CHINWE MADUAGWU, she said widows from the South East are the most marginalized and maltreated.
TNE: How did the idea of TESCAM come about?
The idea came when my father died after the war and my mother became a widow. I saw how my mother suffered when my father died. My father was rich before his death, but once he died, everything changed. I saw my mother maltreated, being bullied but we faced it together with her, my brothers and sisters. I saw that the problem my mother had was loneliness so I vowed that when I grow up I would take care of widows and the orphans. So that was how it started. When I became the president of the Catholic Women’s Organization, CWO, at St Gabriel parish, the first project I carried out, was with the widows and I brought in the wife of the present Governor of Anambra State, Mrs. Obiano who helped us to empower the women.
TNE: So is TESCAM a project of the CWO or that of Mrs. Theresa Ohumaegbulem?
It is my project. As the CWO President, helping widows and orphans was passion and vow to God. When I finished serving as the CWO Coordinator at the Deanery level, I thought of going into business with my younger brother who is based outside the country but I was reminded of my vow to care for widows. It was then that I went into it officially and launched TESCAM.
TNE: How long then has TESCAM been in existence?
I’ve been doing this for a little over a year because I had to battle to get all the necessary approvals, papers and documents.
TNE: What has been your experience so far in relating with the widows and what exactly do you do for them?
It has been tough, even with my experience as a child raised by a widowed mother. I have come to realize that loneliness is the greatest challenge widows face. They do not easily open up to people, so you have to take the time to study and understand them and get them to trust you. Even when your intention is to help them, they still view you with mistrust because they have conditioned their mind to being maltreated. But my experience as a counsellor has helped me to quickly established rapport with them. I organize seminars and invite experts from different fields to talk to them, calm them down and let them know that widowhood though challenging is not and should not be the end of their lives. They do not smile easily because they are not happy but I do my best to get to smile whenever they are around me. So far, we have broken the ice and they now confide in me and see me as their friend and not just benefactor.
We also empower them to be self-reliant. So far, we have empowered over 500 widows. We teach them soap making, baking, pastry making and how to tie head ties. We have also provided grinding machines to some of them. At one of our empowerment programmes, Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu supported us with grinding machines.
Also, some of the widows who have already gone into prostitution, about 10 of them, we have been able to bring out and rehabilitate, another three who encouraged their daughters to go into prostitution to help them raise their other children, we have also been able to convince to bring out the girls. Apart from widows, we also take care of orphans. Right now, we have about 20 orphans. We do not pick from the streets yet because we do not have where to keep them. What we do is take care of school fees for the orphans while they live with relatives. Not too long ago, we took over responsibility for six siblings who had been recently orphaned and left in the care of their widowed grandmother. However, the eldest, a boy of 14 who is in SS2, we learnt was forcefully taken by their father’s kinsmen but we have started the process of having him returned to the grandmother so he can return to school along with the sister who is in JSS1. We are trying to see how we can get them admitted into government schools. Orphans are another category of people often neglected and maltreated by society. And it pains me to see that. The girls especially face horrible experiences. Many of them are raped and impregnated because there is nobody to speak up for them.
We also arrange legal representation for those who need it especially those whose properties are seized by their late husbands’ relatives. Last year, one of the widows came to me that the land her husband left had been taken away by his brother, who threatened to kill her if she ever set her foot into the land. When she came to me I called on a lawyer, an activist, who is sympathetic to widows so he helped to fight her case and now the land has been reclaimed and given back to her. I’ve seen a lot of young widows being maltreated by their in laws. There was another woman, she was 28, immediately her husband died, even before the burial his family members packed all the things in her late husband’s house, she has 5 children and so she ran to me. Again, I went to our lawyer and he fought her case and three quarters of her things were given back to her.
There are some of them who are physically battered sometimes along with their children. There was one whose son was beaten by a co-tenant’s son. According to her, the co-tenant sent his son to beat hers and the son was beaten to the point of being rushed to the hospital. As if that was not enough, after beating the son, the man called in the Police and had the woman arrested telling them that it was she and her son who beat his son. When she called me, my husband and I went to the station and met with the DPO. After explaining to him what happened and that the woman’s child had been rushed to the hospital as a result of the beating he had received, the DPO ordered that the woman be released and the co-tenant arrested. He also gave her some money to get herself and her child treated. He also warned the co-tenant to desist from harassing the woman and her children. Today, the woman is living peacefully in the compound without further harassments from her co-tenants. However, whenever our widows need us, we respond. There is really no limit to our support for our widows.
TNE: Can you hazard a guess why anybody would want to maltreat a widow in her already sorry and anguished situation?
I think the main reason is because they feel the widows have no one to help them and speak for them. With the case of the widow whose son was beaten, the co-tenant had sent his son to beat the widow’s son ‘let me see who will help them’. That’s the major reason and also they feel that even if somebody will speak on their behalf or come to their aid, before help comes, the widow would have already received some measure of the maltreatment or punishment.
TNE: From your experiences with the widows, which part of the country would you say are more prone to maltreating widows?
It is the South East. All my bad cases are from the Eastern part. I have not really got any serious case of maltreatment from the other parts. In the East, the widows really go through a lot. The Umu adas, that is the first daughters in the communities are problems to widows. We women are problems. In fact, if you see what the Umu adas do to them, you will wonder how women can punish their fellow women in such manners. The Umu adas do not make things easy for widows and I’m of the opinion that the Umu adas should go and sleep, they should respect themselves. Nothing like umu adas should exist.
The immediate siblings of the man, especially the brothers, constitute themselves into serious problems for widows. In this day and age, some of these men still want to forcefully marry their brother’s widow. This happened to my mother when our father died shortly after the war and it is still happening. In my mother’s case, it was my elder brother who beat the man almost into coma that made him stop harassing our mother.
Widows should be left alone to mourn their husbands and deal with their loneliness because when a woman loses her husband, the first problems that set in are loneliness and confusion, so they do not need further harassments from anybody. I just urge our people to leave these widows alone. When they go to their villages for their husbands’ funeral, they should just be allowed to bury their dead and return to their bases to face the challenges and realities of raising their children alone.
TNE: Do you think this maltreatment of widows can be solved by legislation or is it simply and purely traditional?
What we do, legislation or no legislation, when issues such as the forceful seizure of their properties arise, we tackle it legally to ensure they get back what belongs to them. The traditional one that we cannot control is the one from the home setting, from the immediate family members and umu adas. Those ones are beyond our control but we are still fighting to see those things stopped. However, we are looking at the possibilities of reaching out to traditional rulers especially in the East to see how we can work with them to deal with the harmful and dehumanizing treatment widows receive.
In fact, we have started. Though such practices are not rampant here in Lagos with the Yorubas, I have met with the Baale of the area where our office is located at Jibowu to intimate him of what we do and solicit his support in curbing the maltreatment of widows. He assured me that they do not have such problems but that anybody who attempts such, if it is brought to his notice will be dealt with. But with the East, it won’t be that easy because we have to go from place to place to educate the traditional rulers and this will cost money. One good thing though is that the traditional rulers we have now are the enlightened ones unlike the yesteryears when the traditional rulers concurred to evil. As soon as we have the funding, we will take off.
TNE: How do you fund your organization?
I can tell you it has not been easy, but God has been helping us. People do not seem to have the passion for widowhood issues, it is not easy getting them to commit to our programmes. But I have a few people who have been supportive. My husband has also been a great pillar of support. If he brings a bag of rice to the house, he knows that it is for everybody, not just his family. I hardly have cash with me because whenever any of my widows beckons, I empty my bag. I visit them to see how they are doing, sometimes unannounced. One day, I visited one of them and found her almost dying on her bed all alone. I had to rush her to the hospital and, of course, I bore the burden of paying the bill. On another occasion, I visited another one, when it was time to cook she began urging me to leave because she didn’t want me to see what she had to cook with. When she realized that I was not ready to leave, she had to bring her meager ingredients. I quickly went out to get some additional ingredients for the meal. That’s how we have been doing it. Whatever little I get, I use for my widows.
TESCAM’s objective ultimately is to empower widows and orphans and no matter the challenges and difficulties, we will not relent.