CITIZENS COMPASS— In the latest episode of CNN’s African Voices, Larry Madowo sits down with Her Majesty Olori Atuwatse III, Queen Consort of the Warri Kingdom. Her influence redefines modern royalty by championing education, empowering women, and inspiring the next generation.
Her Majesty tells Madowo about her experience becoming Queen Consort and the responsibilities that come with the role, “I’ve always lived my life with purpose, and I think purpose isn’t something to be chased, it’s something to be stewarded, a responsibility to use this platform of privilege, as I call it, to serve to the betterment of the people that I’ve been called to.”
Since becoming Queen Consort, Her Majesty has built the Royal Iwere Foundation to focus on education, empowerment, and the environment. She highlights the importance of Nigeria’s industrial scale while emphasising the importance of community, “I believe that our biggest resource is our human resource and my vision, my hope is to build our people so that they can build our communities. (…). So, when I became Queen Consort, the first thing or the first responsibility that I felt to have was, let us build people that will build the community. So, every initiative that we run through the foundation is focused on re-engineering mindsets, giving access to greater opportunities, allowing the people to know that they have agency in forming the kind of future that they hope for and they look for.”
The Queen Consort has faced many struggles in her life. She reminisces on how, in 2018, “I had just had my son, and I suffered from postpartum anxiety. And there was a night that I thought that I was literally going to die. I thought I was going to go crazy. And that moment I had an epiphany. It was like something came to me, it was like, if you died right now and you go and meet your Maker, what are you going to show for it? And at that moment I realised that I was gonna stop living for everybody else but myself.”
While discussing her achievements, the Queen Consort tells Madowo that she recognises the systemic barriers still in place and the work that is needed to be done, “The majority of the continent is still very much rural, and what that would mean would be the belief systems are still very much ancient (…) There are also the internal barriers that nobody really speaks about as a woman (…). And I think the work that I do with women in Nigeria and even across the continent is to first shift the internal biases, help them understand the power that lies within them, unlock that space of agency that they have within them, let them know that your mind works, your voice is powerful, you are the author of your own destiny. A woman that has that, a woman that is unlocked in that space, the external barriers, they’ll fly open.”
Her Majesty talks about her reign so far and what the future might hold, “I feel like it’s 5 years that’s felt like 50. (…) It’s been challenging, most certainly it’s been stretching, but it’s also felt very fulfilling. (…) We can’t delegate responsibility to anybody else. We must build a country, a nation, a continent that our children will be proud to inherit because they deserve it. And so that is the reason for me.”
