By Chimezie Godfrey
For the first time ever in Nigeria history Royal Queens Conference took place on March 30 to commemorate Black Women’s History Month.
About 120 Queens converged at the Palace of Ooni of Ife, in lle Ife, Osun State to discuss the impact of Royal Queens in national development .The conference was organised by Olori Ronke Ademiluyi Ogunwusi and Olori Janet and Afolabi under the Queen Moremi Ajasoro initiative and Olori Janet Afolabi Foundation.
The conference titled,”The Impact of Oloris ( Royal Queens) In National Development” examined how impactful the Queens have been in their Kingdoms.
In her welcome speech, Olori Ronke who is also the founder of Africa Fashion Week London and Nigeria Week and CEO of a Adire Textile hub said, “Today for the first time in history we are coming together to see how we can all work together on different projects to impact our communities.”
She invited the Queen’s to take advantage of the Adire training which is free and she has trained over 500 women and youths.
Olori Janet Afolabi was the keynote speaker. In her keynote speech, she said there are are so many challenges in our communities today. “Our husbands the Kings are in the forefront of solving those problems. But we should also rise up and support them,” she said.
Afolabi encouraged the Queens to identify the problems in the domains, do a problem analysis and strategy on how to solve them.
She said if Queens make impact with their projects in the communities, such impacts can be replicated at the national level.
Encouraging the Queens to start small, Olori Janet said nothing is too small for them to start with. Narrating how she personally teaches English language for free and also feed the students with snacks, Olori Janet said she started with 10 students.
“Today I have over 150 students.I also empowered some set of Traders with 20,000 Naira each and ask them to pay back 5000 Naira monthly so we can give the money to other. Traders none of them defaulted. They all paid the loan back and on time too”.This means that you do not need huge some of money to impact on people,” she said.
Wife of Osun State Governor, Erelu Ngozi Adeleke who was the Special Guest of Honour, in her goodwill message commended Olori Ronke and Olori Janet for organising the event.
She said she was committed to supporting and empowering women to develop Osun state. ‘I am ready to collaborate with you whenever you need me,” she said.
