This paper examines the maltreatment of widows in sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria, Ekiti state in particular. A widow could be regarded as a woman whose husband has died. Despite the advancement in standard of living, widows are still experiencing hard lifestyle after the death of their husbands. These include human right violations, deprivation of liberty, acquisition of witchcraft, denial of assess to husbands’ properties, economic hardship, wicked traditional believes and practices, sexual assaults, forced marriages and discrimination of all kinds to mention a few. These experiences of varied forms of maltreatments have been resulting to poor mental and physical well-being of victims, even affecting the lives of those children left behind by the diseased. The population consisted of all widows in Ekiti State, Nigeria. A sample of 50 widows aged between 20-50 and 50 and above were selected from five Local Governments areas in Ekiti State for the study. A questionnaire titled “Maltreatment of Widows Questionnaire” was used to elicit information on the subject from the respondents. The instrument validity and the reliability of the instrument was ensured.. The data collected were analysed using student’s t-test to test the hypotheses raised at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed that age has a significant relationship with widow’s maltreatment while it was also discovered that traditional believes significantly influence widows maltreatment, whereas traditional practices do not. Based on these findings, it was recommended that all the irrational and injurious cultural believes about widows should be stopped and there should be freedom of choice for any widow that wishes to remarry particularly the younger ones. The properties left behind by the deceased should be inherited by the widow and the children, not the family members.

Keywords:  widow, maltreatment, inheritance, women, decease, culture, Ekiti State,

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