Gender Victimization

Badagry is the first community to receive the Christian religion inNigeria. For this, every good reason exists to suppose that its coming into earlycontact with the missionaries should have caused the Ogu people to acquire a healthierunderstanding of fair play in the context of widowhood practices. Regrettably, they seemto respond more slowly to change in their attitudes to widows. Thus, despite theoverwhelming presence of Christian relics in the ancient town of Badagry, traditionalcustoms such as wife inheritance and widowhood rites have continued to appearsignificantly associated with violence against which women are not well-protected.“Gender Victimization: A Study of Widowhood Practices” among Ogu People of Lagos is thefocus of this study. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted for the study.Thus, five in-depth interviews and three focus group discussion instruments were used tocollect primary data, which were used to complement quantitative data. Althoughquantitative data were subjected to univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses,qualitative data were cleaned, reorganized into themes and analyzed. The study foundthat much as the Ogu people of Lagos acknowledge the position of the scriptures onsociety’s non-criminal relation with widows, they still believe that their culturecomfortably drives the greater proportion of their widow-friendly interactions. Thisstudy suggests that the adoption of cultural best practices in handling women and theirpeculiar issues will tone down violence in customary widowhood practices and enablewomen who lost their husbands in circumstances beyond their controls accesscommunity-based support