SOCIO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - LOH 181

In the African setting, women are mostly relegated to playing second best and often running in the shadow of their male counterpart, which is one of the major reasons we are still lagging as a third world continent.

If you look at the Western setting and other developed nations, it is evident that women contribute as much as their male counterpart in the building and development of the country's socio-economic structure. This cannot be said in our clime as women have frequently been segregated and discriminated upon in anything socio-economic related.

The majority of them have also been brainwashed to believe that a woman's life begins and ends in the family unit.

This ideology, passed down from generations to generations, has impeded the mentality of most African women, making them feel the end point of their lives is getting married and having children.

Which, of course is a crucial role to be met, but then aside the family unit, women can be so much more if given the opportunity and chance to.

In my opinion, a woman can achieve twice as much and can be an equal game player as their male counterpart if she has the needed support.

And what is that support? The right words as a medium or form of encouragement, the right environment, enlightened parents, an understanding family and a supportive partner. Because often times, it is this aforementioned people that determines greatly a woman's future and achievements.

I have spent almost a decade of my life as a social worker, working with an NGO whose main goal is reducing poverty to the barest minimum. In all my years of experience, I have come to the realization that poverty sterns from female dependency, such that not empowering the girl child is a recipe for poverty.

Looking at the Northern and Southern regions of Nigeria, we'd see that the Northern part is worse hit with poverty because the women, especially in the rural setting, are made to be highly dependent and deprived of basic human empowerment. This is a staunch rule of thumb in that area because they have a strong rooted religious practice that has been misconstrued and intertwined with their culture.

Similarly, in the urban and rural setting of the Southern part of Nigeria, Urban women are most likely to navigate their way out of poverty.

They are often more industrious than rural women who are saddled with archaic customs and traditions of gender discrimination and bias.

It is this discovery of female relegation, especially in the rural areas, that has prompted the NGO I work with to be rooted but not restricted to the rural environment of the Northern part of Delta State Nigeria.

Our main focus includes; children, teenage boys and girls, widows, divorces (women) and the less privileged because these are the victims of the marginalized side of life.

One of the major cases we have handled over the years is that of Maria.

Maria was a family woman who lived with her husband and three children in a rural community. Her story is quite a pathetic one as her husband died while trying to protect her from being burnt alive.

As the story goes, Maria was accused of witchcraft. This came after the demise of a wealthy woman she had a fall-out with in their community.

The woman was a philanthropist and everyone in their community benefited from her good deeds and philanthropy.

When the woman died, the villagers were not having it. Soon rumors started spreading that upon confrontations between Maria and the lady, Maria threatened to deal with the woman.

What seemed like a joke or mere rumor became a serious issue when one evening the villagers stormed Maria's home demanding for her head. While her husband tried to buy her time so she can escape with the children, he was killed by the angry mob. Maria and her children on the other hand, narrowly escaped with Maria sustaining several burns on her head.

We saw Maria at the marketplace in the year 2018, when we went for financial and intellectual empowerment of market women in rural areas.

What drew my attention to Maria was the baby she was carrying. As we got done with our outreach and about to leave, I quickly showed her to my boss whom also took interest in her.

At first, we thought she was mad, but after numerous question and answer section with her, we discovered she wasn't, at least not entirely.

Maria narrated her ordeal to us, how she became homeless and a destitute for the past thirteen years. She told us how her children were taken away by random people and how she was sexually abused which resulted to the child she's carrying.

Getting Maria to this stage wasn't an easy task. We were able to track down one of the strangers who took two of Maria's children, and it was a battle of custody because we saw that she doesn't have the capacity to provide the basics for the children.

We also battled the police because the illegal guardian of Maria's children went first to the police station and filed a report against us accusing us of child trafficking and a threat to her life.

Furthermore, we battled Maria's family as they refused to take custody of her and her two children.

Finally, it was the women affairs commission of my state that interceded and settled the matter.

We were granted custody of Maria and her newborn, but we lost the custody battle of the other two children as they vehemently refused to reunite with their mother tagging her a witch.

The illegal guardian of the children won custody of them and that settled the case.

I tagged the lady an illegal guardian because she doesn't have the authorized documentations to be running a homeless shelter, but somehow she was running one with some teenagers under her custody heavily pregnant.

We tried to locate her first child who by then was an adult, but we could not. Rumor has it that she was taken to Lagos and was forcefully married off to her abuser when she became pregnant. At the time we tried locating her we heard she was in court.

Even though we could not save all of Maria's children, we were able to save her with the last child and gave her another opportunity at life to be part of the intricate structure of the economy.

PS
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