• We’re dying by instalment, Ebonyi female menial workers lament, beg govt for assistance
• Gov’s wife bans pregnant women, children from mining sites
From Wilson Okereke, Afikpo
This story could pass as a catalogue of suffering women; it presents a long list of what women who do menial jobs go through especially in Ebonyi State. They live a life of drudgery.
•All for survival
To really understand what these women go through to put food on the table in their homes, visit any construction site in Abakaliki and its environs.
There is also another set that is involved in even a more dangerous venture. This set of women and children are found in mining sites, including quarry across the state. They work without protective gears and expose themselves to all manner of risks, particularly health hazards.
In the twilight of 2023, Daily Sun visited various construction sites in Abakaliki and interacted with a large number of women comprising the aged, widows and other indigent young females whose source of livelihood lie on daily mixing of building concretes and engaging in other menial jobs.
The stories of what they go through just to fend for themselves and their families are pathetic and heartrending. Our investigation exposed a people that labour daily under very harsh and unimaginable conditions to contribute their quota to the growth and development of the society but have nothing to show for it. They work like elephant and feed like ant.
Daily Sun met people that have given so much and still giving to the society, but are seemingly abandoned by the system they expected to protect and cater for them.
At St. Theresa Cathedral of the Catholic Church, Ogoja Road in Abakaliki where massive construction work was ongoing, one of the women labourers told our correspondent that she took to the menial job to raise money and settle a debt of N102,000 incurred in treating her sick husband.
About 27-year-old Mrs. Justina Nwibo, a mother of three who hails from Izicha in Abakaliki Local Government Area was providing services to mason men and bricklayers at the site.
“It was after we had spent a lot of money over my husband, Mr Monday Nwibo who was involved in a road accident in December 2019, that I joined the menial job to clear part of his medical bill and also provide for the family mostly as the man has become incapacitated,” she said.
Mrs Bridget Nwankpu, an indigene of Uburu Amachi in Abakaliki LGA, a mother of four children who started the work in 2022 said in spite of the burdensome nature of the activity that she could not abandon it since she was yet to have an alternative means of livelihood.
Lamenting that the job does not give her opportunity to be with her children and provide them with that motherly guidance, she said: “I hardly sleep without taking medicine each day that I am involved in mixing of concrete and the worst aspect is that my children live as sheep without shepherd during the day as the work usually keeps me till dusk most times.
“Sometimes, it is when I go home around 8:00pm that I run around to prepare what we will eat before going to bed.”
A pregnant mother of five, Mrs Nneka Igube said that she engaged in the job to complement her spouse’s farming activities and contribute to the upkeep of the home.
“At times, I will make about N3,000 or more but some days, there won’t be job. So, there’s nothing I can do than to keep on supporting my husband in my own little way,” she said.
Igube who said she is a former patent medicine store attendant also said that she buys foodstuffs on credit any day she was not hired and pays the debt once there was job and she got paid. She however, lamented that it had not been easy doing such herculean activity with her pregnancy.
Just like most of the women interviewed, Mrs. Elizabeth Nwibo, a widow and mother of six from Sharon in Ndiebor Ishiagu Community of Izzi LGA, said that concrete mixing was the only work she could contemplate at the moment.
With the job, she been managing to train her six children since the death of her husband.
“I joined the work immediately after my husband’s death in 2012 and apart from my first son who is under apprenticeship in Lagos, I am the only person training the rest with the menial work,” she said.
Another widow labourer who narrated her ordeal was Mrs. Regina Nwankwegu Mbam from Ndiofutu Amachi in Abakaliki LGA. According to her, a protracted sickness which eventually claimed her husband’s life had crippled the family economically.
“During the period of the sickness, we were carrying the man from one health facility to another until he later died and left me with three children.
“And after I discovered that I could not make it in the village, I decided to relocate to Abakaliki town where I joined the bandwagon of doing menial jobs. We serve mason people and do anything from mixing concrete, carrying cement, blocks, water,” she said.
Regrettably, the woman further disclosed that she is gradually becoming addicted to pain relief medicines having been taking them frequently since so many years that she found herself in the system.
For Mrs. Maria Nwankpu, she has been using the money generated from the menial job for the treatment of her bedridden first son, Miracle Nwankpu, since the past five years.
Nwankpu alleged that she had to “pick shovel and head pan as other Izzi women in order to survive” after her husband neglected her as first wife, recalling how she resumed “this hard job six months after I underwent hernia operation to fend for my two children.”
The story of Mrs. Oluchi Nwedu whose husband has been on sick bed for over five years following suspected poison, was not different, as she opted for the menial job to enable her provide for family.
“The work is actually hard but also profitable because it remains my only source of income to sponsor my children in school and provide my spouse with his medication regularly,” explained the 28-year-old mother of five.
The woman who hails from Enyadilogu village in Ebonyi LGA said she might not leave the job soon as her children are still tender.
Two other widows, 32-year-old Mrs. Nneka Nwaoma of Ikenyi village in Izzi and Mrs. Mrs. Nwakaego Nwambara from Enyadilogu Ishieke said they started the job after the death of their spouses in 2017 and 2022, respectively.
Nwambara said: “I had given birth to seven children before the death of my husband but as God would have it, I am coping as other women with this job.”
And like her colleagues, she said though the work is hard but she could not stop it until help comes her way from somewhere.
One of the youngest at the site was Mrs. Oluchi Igube. The 21-year-old widow and mother of two children said that she depended on the stressful activity to meet her financial requirements including children’s school fees, feeding, clothing and other things.
“Since I encountered the misfortune, I do join other daily workers in their cluster at Spera In-Deo axis in search of job,” she explained.
The young woman further disclosed that it takes special grace of God for her to see who would hire her because the activity comes periodically.
It was no doubt a catalogue of woes. From Mrs. Chinyere Aloh from Izilokwo Amachi, a widow and mother of eight, to Mrs. Queendaline Nweli, 26, from Agalegu Amachi; Mrs. Chinyere Achike, from Ebyia Unuphu and Mrs. Rosemary Mbam from Ndiofutu Amachi, all in Abakaliki LGA, the only thing they achieve with the proceeds from the menial jobs was to barely food for their respective families.
Two other widows; Mrs. Francisca Ogodo, 25, and Mrs. Monica Ogbonna, who said that she comes from far away Nwofe in Ebonyi LGA to Abakaliki town for the job on daily basis, lamented that catering for children had not been easy at all.
Ogbonna who claimed to have 10 children said that the job has been sustaining her family since June last year, when she lost her husband.
Mrs. Esther Mbam from Ndiofutu Amachi in Abakaliki whose husband is a carpenter said that she spends at least N600 for transport to and fro daily in search of the job.
Another labourer, Mrs. Ngozi Ofoke, a mother of nine from Ikenyi in Izzi LGA said that her daily income could not afford the training of all her nine children.
Ofoke, alongside Mrs. Ifeoma Nwakwegu from Ndiofutu, Mrs. Anthonia Eji and several others, would want the government to come to their rescue.
The likes of Eji who wish to open businesses want government to design special package for them including empowering them with skills and take-off grants.
They urged Governor Francis Nwifuru to look into their plights as they said, many of them were already ‘dying by instalment.’
Meanwhile, the wife of Ebonyi State governor, Mrs Mary-Maudline Nwifuru, has cautioned pregnant women and underaged children to stop engaging themselves in mining activities in the state.
Mrs Nwifuru who is the founder of Better Health for Rural Women, Children and Internally Displaced (BERWO) Foundation said that her organization would partner Women in Mining Nigeria (WIMIN), in the state to enforce the Mining Act 2007.
According to her, the enforcement of the Act would ensure practical action to identify and address the worst forms of risks in mining activities for pregnant women and underaged children.
Speaking when the body of women miners paid her Christmas homage at her country home, Oferekpe, Agbaja in Izzi Local Government Area of the State, on December 30, 2023, she stated that it would also reduce mining activities that put vulnerable persons at high risk.
She urged women to be productive in their homes noting that such would encourage their husbands to give them opportunity to run their homes well.
She also reiterated her resolve to use her pet project and uplift the living condition of the Ebonyi woman.