IMPACT OF RADIO ADVERTISING IN ADVOCATING AGAINST TOXIC WIDOWHOOD PRACTICES
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IMPACT OF RADIO ADVERTISING IN ADVOCATING AGAINST TOXIC WIDOWHOOD PRACTICES
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
A few researchers have expressed interest in widowhood. However, the recent focus on them has shifted to the destructive acts directed at them. Widows’ situations in traditional Nigerian society have previously been disregarded, as has social and legal prejudice against Nigerian women. Human rights violations make it hard to achieve the long-awaited global progress.
Discrimination against women’s rights is a long-standing issue that has survived various attempts to abolish it, including poisonous widowhood practices. When widows lose their spouses, they face humiliating treatment, fetish discrimination, and painful rites known as harmful widowhood traditions.
Some of these practices include drinking the water used to bathe their deceased husbands’ corpses, compulsory hair shaving, sitting and sleeping on the bare floor throughout the mourning period, crying out at intervals, false imprisonment, sleeping with the deceased husband’s corpse, going without bathing for several days, the wife being inherited by the husband’s brother, and denial of custody of their children.
It’s worth noting that these behaviours are especially prevalent in rural areas. Unfortunately, rural women are unaware of their rights and unable to question the logic of these beliefs and practices, allowing them to knowingly or unknowingly support the perpetuation and, eventually, violation of their economic, social, and cultural rights (Onyegu and Essiet 2002; Lockwood 2006; Anaeme 2012).
Even in the twenty-first century, civilization and technology have kept their influence. Several initiatives by local and international groups to alleviate harmful widowhood customs have been unsuccessful.
The Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, was one attempt to eliminate discrimination against women on a worldwide basis.
The Convention listed areas where women face discrimination and urged governments to modify their laws, devise gender policies, and establish institutions to carry them out.
One of the Nigerian government’s additional instruments is the adoption of the Abuse against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act, which protects against harmful widowhood practices and other forms of abuse or mistreatment against individuals.
Despite these efforts, bad widowhood traditions persist, particularly in rural regions, prompting academics to advise that programmes to avoid these habits be implemented through mass media platforms, specifically radio, a popular item that rural people may acquire.
The media disseminates information on the significance and meaning of events. It is impossible to report on everything that happens in the news or in newspapers.
As a result, any news that appears in the newspaper or on radio and television must have been deemed relevant by gatekeepers. On occasion, the media attempts to educate viewers values and behaviours.
Radio is a form of mass media that employs electromagnetic radio waves to deliver information, education, and entertainment to listeners via transmitters and antennas.
As a result, community radio stations were established in many African countries in the 1990s in response to community needs for public information.
Community radio is defined as radio stations owned and controlled by members of a specific community in order to promote and protect the community’s common interests and aims.
People at the grassroots can utilise community radio to voice their concerns about issues that are important to them, such as health, gender relations, human rights, security, and infrastructure.
As a result, the researcher was compelled to explore the role of radio advertising in arguing against dangerous widowhood practices in Nigeria.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Widows in Nigeria encounter numerous obstacles. According to Opaluwa, A. D. (2013), the majority of communities and customs existed prior to Nigeria’s independence in 1960 and the country’s most recent constitution in 1999.
Many Nigerians (including the educated) believe that their rituals and traditions take precedence over Nigeria’s constitution owing to ignorance, a desire for supremacy, selective amnesia, and evil. Widowhood practices that injure women are, at the absolute least, a violation of their rights.
Widows are expected to perform certain rituals after their husbands die, such as shaving their heads, drinking the bath water used to wash their husbands’ bodies, and mourning her husband’s death for three to twelve months, depending on the ethnic group.
Widows do not have the right to inherit land or property, and widows are not allowed to bathe or clean their surroundings during the mourning period, except in rare cases once a day.
The Child Welfare Information Gateway (2013) and Idialu (2012) both condemn this inhumane treatment of widows, claiming that such emotional abuse produces significant psychological suffering that impacts widows for the rest of their life, highlighting the need to stop these behaviours.
Radio has long been seen as a dependable medium for informing, instructing, and sensitising the rural population about a variety of issues. Its potential to affect a group’s behaviour has been demonstrated.
Despite the development and operation of local radio stations in the South West, as well as their programming, damaging widowhood customs continue to exist, blaming ignorance. Is it because compelling shows aren’t broadcast on radio, or because people aren’t aware of them?
The purpose of this study was to determine how local radio has influenced people’s attitudes towards widows and to propose solutions to make local radio more effective in the fight against detrimental widowhood practices in South West Nigeria.
1.3 Objectives of the study
The overarching goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of radio advertising in campaigning against harmful widowhood practices in Nigeria. Specifically, the study aims to
Determine the forms of detrimental widowhood practices prevalent in Nigeria’s South West area.
Investigate to what extent residents in the South West region have access to local radio.
Determine whether local radios in South West Nigeria have programmes that focus on the eradication of harmful widowhood customs.
Determine the extent to which local radio broadcasts have influenced the eradication of detrimental widowhood customs in Nigeria’s South West area.
1.4 Research question.
The research is guided by the following questions:
What types of detrimental widowhood customs are imposed in North Central Nigeria?
How widely do residents in North Central Nigeria have access to local radio? Do local radios in South West Nigeria have programmes aimed at ending damaging widowhood practices?
To what extent have local radio programmes influenced the abolition of harmful widowhood practices in Nigeria’s South West?
1.5 Significance of the Study
Toxic widowhood practices are harmful to widowed women because they can have an impact on both their emotional and psychological well-being, potentially violating their human rights.
The study’s conclusions are designed to highlight the importance of society abandoning harmful behaviours and traditions while still fostering gender equality and female dignity.
The study’s conclusions will assist anthropologists, sociologists, legislators, community stakeholders, and academics alike. The study identifies a missing link between the variables under examination and contributes to raising awareness of unfavourable customary behaviours associated with widowhood and property inheritance among government officials, policymakers, and, most significantly, women.
Finally, the study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge and serve as a resource for academics and students interested in undertaking more research on a comparable topic.
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