The death of a woman’s husband leads to the woman becoming a widow. An analysis of has revealed that among the Igbo and the Yoruba traditionally, “there are large differences in age of husbands and wives especially in traditionally societies”. Among the Igbos, the acquisition of all that is required for marriage consummation takes some time as such many would be husbands were about an average of age of 40 years while the wives were often 15 or 20 years younger. In “polygamous families, the age disparity for second and subsequent wives is even greater”. On the other hand, responses from the Yoruba respondents show that while the first does not account for the age disparity between husband and wife as the Yoruba are liberal about marriage rites and obligations, the second reason accounts for age disparity between husband and wife and subsequent reason why some husband die earlier than their wives due to old age.
In addition to the above, the Igbo respondents traced the fairly large number of widow in Igboland to the civil war between Nigeria and Biafra (1967-1970) in which, it was estimated that more than one million Igbos, mostly lost their lives. This coupled with the low incidence of widow re-marriage among the Igbo, accounted for why according to the respondents, there are many current widows in Igboland. On the other hand, this other factor did not apply to the Yoruba since the civil war did not have this same devastating effect on the Yoruba men and the process of remarriage of widows in Yorubaland is not as rigorous as it is among their Igbo counterpart.
It must be pointed out however, that age disparity between spouses is not the only demographic variable that is important in the issue of widowhood. Divorce and remarriage are important in clustering widowhood at two different periods of life cycle based on the initial marital history. It follows therefore that those who divorce and remarry may not be widowed until late in life since the new husbands tend to be closer in age to their wives. Furthermore, the time at which a woman becomes a widow determines whether she could remarry or remain a permanent widow.
