WAR: Royal queens declares war in Osun state….
It was an enthusiastic moment at the palace of Oonirinsa where the inaugural conference of Oloris (queens) took place at the early hours of 30th, March 2023.
It was gathered that the programme was packaged and convened by Olori Aderonke Ogunwusi and Olori Afolabi of Apomu kingdom.
In her welcome address, Queen Moremi Ajasooro’s Ambassador, princess Aderonke Ademiluyi enunciated the roles of women in our society particularly, the importance of queens in their various communities. We can not over emphasize the heroic and historic roles that females like Luwo, Queen Moremi of Ife, Osemawe of Ondo, Alafin Waranpopo of Oyo played in the security and the economy of their communities in their days and that is why this conference was organised in order to charge and motivate our queens for more developmental projects in their respective communities.
Narrating some of the developmental projects that she has embarked on, Olori Aderonke said the establishment of QMA in 2016 was to remember the legendary Queen Moremi Ajasooro and today the program has played major roles in cultural education, reduction of modern day slavery and children trafficking through advocacy, economic orientation through establishment of Adire textile hub where youths are trained in manufacturing Adire thereby generating employment. In fact, our Adire has been taken to countries like Brasil, UK, many African countries and so on. Come May, we shall be in Brasil to show case our cultural heritage to the whole world again as said by Olori Aderonke.
While giving her speech, the co convener of the event, Queen Afolabi, the Olori of Apomu kingdom reminded the queens of the roles of Queen Amina who has over 20,000 soldiers in the North during her days, the economic effectiveness Queen Yidia of the old Bendel and how Queen Moremi Ajasooro gave up herself in order to get the secret of the enemy of Ife kingdom and use it against them which was how Ife had a permanent victory over their enemies.
Yes, they fought physical wars in their days and we should not say we don’t have wars again in our society, what of war of unemployment? What of war of child mortality rate? What of war of financial instability? What of war of child abuse? What of war of malnutrition? What of our health as Oloris? asked by the wife of Alapomu of Apomu.
Therefore, because royalty has bestowed on us to be Queens, let us all declare war against all these menace in our communities as said by the retired journalist.
In furtherance of her speech, she said it took her time to conduct a research on why there is abject poverty in her kingdom and she discovered that many of the indegens are giving birth to the numbers that their financial capacities can not sponsor. So, she had to start giving out loans of 20,000 naira per person with no interest with the believe that when they pay back, another batch will be disbursed, she said to her surprise, all of them refunded the loans and another batch was reinburced.
She further said from the research that she conducted through the committee that she established, she noticed that there is need for conducting lessons in her community and she ventured into teaching students English language every Fridays of the week inside the palace and free snacks would have been on ground for the students after the lesson for stomach infrastructure.
Mrs Ngozi Adeleke, the First Lady of Osun state commended the Oloris encouraged the Oloris to please work on everything that has been said and promised the Oloris that her office will be opened to partner with all the Queens. Feel free to approach me anytime, any day because my office will run for 24 hours as said by the former banker. Also, she used the medium to plead with the Oloris to pray for her husband as Osun state Gubernatorial case is still in court.
The meeting ended as the dancers of Ooni spiced the event with various dancing steps. Equally, a portrait from the house of Oduduwa was presented to the wife of Osun state Governor.