On Thursday March 30, two royal queens of two ancient towns in Yorubaland —Olori Ronke Ademiluyi Ogunwusi of Ile-Ife and Olori Janet Mba-Afolabi of Apomu, both in Osun State— for the first time played host to about 120 queens of traditional kingdoms from across Nigeria who converged at the Palace of Ooni of Ife for the first-ever Royal Queens Conference in Nigeria. It was organised by the Queens under Olori Ogunwusi’s Queen Moremi Ajasoro Initiative and Olori Janet Afolabi Foundation. The two queens convened the conference with the theme “The Impact of Oloris (Royal Queens) In National Development” to commemorate the Black Women’s History Month and to discuss the impact of royal queens in their Kingdoms and in national development.
Olori Janet, a multiple award-winning journalist and the keynote speaker said there are so many challenges facing various communities today and their husbands are at the forefront of solving those problems while urging the queens to rise up and support them. The Apomu queen told fellow queens to identify major challenges in the domains, do a problem analysis and then strategise on how to solve them. She stated that if queens take up various impactful projects in their communities, such impacts can easily be felt at the national level. Olori Janet thus encouraged her fellow Olori to start small as nothing is too small for them to start with. She gave an example of how she personally teaches some of her husband’s subjects in Apomu English Language for free and also feed the students with snacks. She started with 10 students but now has over 150 students attending her lecture. Olori Janet also empowered some set of traders with a loan of N20,000 each and asked them to pay back N5000 monthly so others can benefit from the loan scheme.