200 indigent widows in Afikpo North local government area of Ebonyi state, have been empowered financially, by two churches and a foundation to revive their dying businesses.
The Churches, Apex Glory of God and Christian Church and the foundation, Agape World Outreach, selected widows that are into petty businesses.
The beneficiaries were doing vegetable, pap, palm oil and other petty businesses which were collapsing.
Apostle Chukwuma Igbo, one of the clerics that sponsored the financial packages, noted that it was done to ensure that the widows don’t engage in crime, describing poverty as parent of crime.
He said: “We raise some widows to be able to give them a kind of palliative. We gave them some monies to add to what they are doing to enable them to continue to live better.
” We know those of them who are already doing something to support their families and we know those who need like N5,000-N10,000 to support their little businesses. We also accommodated those who have not started something but they can start with N5,000 or thereabouts.
“What we want to achieve is to ensure that indigent widows have something to cope with, for them to have one petty trade or the other and you can agree with me that poverty is a parent of crime. If a widow who doesn’t have anything doing, it can lead to adultery and that is what we are trying to curb to make sure they can fend for themselves. We also have plans to beef up their businesses”, he said.
Some of the windows including madam Theresa Oko, promised to utilize the money given to her and commended the churches for the gesture.
” I sell vegetables in the market but I have no money to continue in the business. I joined my colleagues and came here and I was given money to revive my business which has died”, she noted.