As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark International Widows’ Day 2025, the Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) is calling for urgent and coordinated action to address the deepening vulnerabilities faced by widows across the country. This year’s theme, “Widows’ Rights are Human Rights: Empowerment Through Justice and Inclusion,” resonates powerfully with the lived experiences of millions of Nigerian women left behind by conflict, displacement, and systemic neglect. From the communities of Borno to Zamfara, Benue to Niger, Bayelsa to Enugu, widows are being created daily by rising insecurity, insurgency, and health emergencies. However, beyond the pain of bereavement lies a more painful truth: widowhood in Nigeria is often a sentence to homelessness, dispossession, sexual violence, economic exclusion, and social stigma. Many are evicted from their homes, denied inheritance, harassed by landlords, or forced to endure degrading traditional rites, all while struggling to care for their children.
Nigeria is home to over 8 million widows, yet their plight remains largely invisible in national policy and programming. With poverty deepening and displacement rising, urgent protection is not just necessary, it is long overdue.
WRAPA is therefore calling on the Federal and State Governments, traditional and faith leaders, and the private sector to prioritise targeted interventions for widows’ rights and livelihood support. This includes enacting and enforcing laws that protect widows’ access to housing, inheritance, and justice; integrating widows into national social protection systems; facilitating the abolishing of harmful cultural practices; and investing in sustainable economic empowerment initiatives.
One such interventions informed the WRAPA 2024 Mustard Seed Widows Shelter Project, implemented in partnership with a Real Estate development firm, Modern Shelter Systems & Services Ltd. The intervention provided ₦100,000 in rent support to 106 vulnerable widows in the nooks and crannies of six Northern states and the FCT. The initiative shielded widows from eviction and abuse, gave them breathing space to rebuild their lives, and engaged local leaders in shifting attitudes on widowhood. Many beneficiaries were able to stabilise small businesses, return their children to school, and regain a sense of dignity. The 2025 intervention will target another six states of Southern Nigeria and the FCT.
This model shows what can be achieved when policy and resources are intentionally allocated to address vulnerabilities. WRAPA urges governments and development partners to expand interventions to support widows as part of a sustainable framework. A single act of charity is not enough; widows need a system that protects and empowers them.
A widow’s grief should not lead to further forms of pain and loss. Prevalent acts of marginalisation, deprivation and injustice should be eliminated and replaced by natural justice, equity and good conscience, as fundamental rights, not privileges. After all, Widowhood is neither sought nor invited. It is a divine and inevitable phase of life where, at some time we all answer a call to the beyond.
On the occasion of the 2025 International Widows’ Day, WRAPA calls on the Government to urgently act in line with the provisions of Chapter 4 of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution as amended, and it’s commitments in sections 20 and 21 of the African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), and in furtherance of the protections in the domesticated African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.
Widows need justice and care embedded in defined policy and practice, not short-lived or selective acts of Sympathy. Their dignity, livelihood and duty of care must be protected and supported by families, formal and informal institutions, as well as communities.
For more information on ongoing WRAPA work and the 2024 Widows SheltHer Report, click here, or please visit www.wrapanigeria.org or email info@wrapanigeria.org
For interviews, please contact: Habiba Ahmed on +234 7062139252 habiba@wrapanigeria.org
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Paul Adama on +234 9048574601 pauladama@wrapanigeria.org
