Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology

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Browsing Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology by Author "Ajala, Olufisayo Temitope"

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    Coping and social support strategies of Nigerian military widows in the war against Boko Haram
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Ajala, Olufisayo Temitope; Heinecken, Lindy; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Nigerian Army has been engaged in asymmetric warfare with the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram since 2011, which is the single largest deployment of soldiers in any internal security operation in post-independence Nigeria. Since then, there has been an uncountable loss of military personnel and civilian casualties caught up in this conflict. This study examined how the Nigerian Army widows coped with their husbands' deaths and sustained their livelihoods in the absence of state support. The study looked at the welfare benefits for deceased servicemen in the Nigerian Army, the numerous challenges women faced in accessing the benefits, the influence and support provided by the military widows Association, the coping and social support strategies they adopted and the effect of the deaths on their livelihoods. The study contained seven chapters that include the background, theoretical and literature review, Nigerian Army structure and organization, widowhood in Nigeria, findings, methodology, and discussions of the study. The background chapter established the rationale of the study, locating it within the limited attention paid to military casualties of the conflict, and the need to understand the impact of the war on widows, and the military community. The theoretical and conceptual framework chapter discussed the bureaucracy, social capital and social support theories, and the extant literature on compensations for military widows, their challenges, and how they differ across various militaries. This chapter examines the coping and social support strategies used by military widows and other war widows in various societies. The next chapters focused on the Nigerian military and widowhood in Nigeria and discusses the structure, operations, and welfare schemes of the Nigerian Army. This chapter identified the dysfunctional nature of Nigeria’s military bureaucracy as a major factor impeding the payment of benefits to military widows, whereas the chapter on widowhood looked at the coping environment of widows in Nigerian society, and those of military widows from past operations. Further discussed in this chapter was the role and influence of the Nigerian Military Wives and Widows Associations. Following these were the methodology, findings, and discussion chapters. An interpretive qualitative method was used in this work to describe and derive meaning from the lived experiences of widows of Nigerian Army soldiers whose husbands died in the war against Boko Haram. The study was conducted over a period of four months from December 2020 to March 2021 in Lagos, Abuja, and Maiduguri in the Southern and Northern parts of Nigeria. Data for the study was collected in other sites in Jos, Bauchi, Osogbo and Ilorin, and virtually, through video-conferencing platforms and phone interviews. A total of 29 interviews with widows, and 14 interviews with members of the media, civil society and military communities were conducted during the period of the fieldwork. A key finding was the difficulties the women faced in accessing their benefits. Most of the participants experienced a lack of support from military officials in processing their benefits and were left alone to deal with a large and inefficient bureaucracy. However, some experienced more difficulties than others. Widows of officers were more able to access their benefits compared to those of non-commissioned officers due to their social status and personal connections within the military. For all widows, accessing benefits was influenced by a system of patronage. It was found that the Nigerian military bureaucracy functions along neo-patrimonial lines, which hampers the efficient functioning of the military bureaucracy and opens the way to corruption and the exploitation of women. Another key finding of the study was the support provided by the Military Widows Association. The discussions revealed that the Association has been able to provide some form of bridging social capital, the lacked the resources and ability to provide linking social capital to access the military institution and the wider civil society. Without state and associational support, military widows turned to their families and social charities for support. While families provided bonding capital that helped women cope and survive, this was limited by the cultural demands placed on widows in African societies. In comparison with other studies on military widows, an important finding within the African context was that bonding capital was often eroded by the traditional practices that occasioned widowhood, such as property inheritance, forced remarriage, and other forms of social vulnerability and stigmatization. Hence, they resort to other coping resources, such as spirituality, resilience, and personal strength to cope with the loss. Finally, this study evaluated the impact of death on the livelihood of women. The findings revealed that the death significantly altered the socioeconomic lives and ivelihood strategies of the women. The widows struggled with raising and educating children, playing dual parent roles, and overall family maintenance following their husband’s demise. Furthermore, the women’s vulnerable conditions were exploited by relatives who demanded their share of the late husband’s entitlements to members of the Nigerian military. They also encountered various forms of sexual exploitation, in exchange for their late husband's benefits from Nigerian Army officials. The study’s key conclusions are that Nigerian military widows experienced key difficulties accessing their benefits due to the centralized and dysfunctional nature of the neo-patrimonial Nigerian military bureaucracy. Although it was expected that the Military Widows Association would support the widows, their agency was limited by their lack of capacity to provide the needed bridging and linking social capital, and negative attitudes towards the military by wider society. As a result, they resorted to using different economic, social, and psychological support strategies, depending on the reach of their social capital, status, and education. The useful recommendations highlighted by this study include the need for the Nigerian military to streamline the bureaucracy associated with payments of benefits. Other recommendations are the establishment of a military ombudsman to address issues of bribery and sexual exploitation perpetrated by officers against widows and NOKs of deceased soldiers, the provision of institutional support to the military widow’s association, and the need for the military widows association to extend its activities into the civil society space. This study was not without limitations. One of them was the challenges of access to the participants. This was expected given the nature of the topic. Also, I interviewed more widows of non-commissioned officers than commissioned officers. This was due to the officer-enlisted ratio present in the Nigerian military. The study would have benefitted from interviews with widows of senior officers, from the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and above for more comparison of experiences. The study’s focus on widows, rather than widowers of the Nigerian Army is another limitation of the study. This limitation, however, is a function of the overtly gendered nature of military institutions, and the exclusion of women from combat roles, including in the Nigerian military. Nonetheless, the findings and conclusions of this study are verifiable, generalizable, and reliable as they compare with the findings of other studies and correlate with the few studies on military families in Africa. Areas for further research identified by this study include focusing on the deployment and post-deployment challenges among Nigerian soldiers and military families involved in the Boko Haram conflict/and/or Internal Security Operations in Nigeria and studying the narratives of wives and families of disabled Nigerian soldiers in the Boko Haram conflict. Studies of this nature will open new vistas of knowledge on the experiences of serving Nigerian military families and the challenges they face in performing this crucial national duty and service.