Five years ago, when Ogiame Atuwatse III ascended the throne as the 21st Olu of Warri, he made a call that would become particularly significant at this milestone: he asked Itsekiris in the diaspora to develop a consistent rhythm of returning home.
This August, they did.
From across Nigeria and the diaspora, sons and daughters of Iwere returned to Warri Kingdom as the Olu marked the fifth anniversary of his coronation. At the heart of the celebrations was the inaugural Itsekiri Global Homecoming, a seven-day gathering conceived as more than an opportunity to celebrate. It was about reconnecting with culture, community, and, perhaps most importantly, the future of Iwere.
It was a fitting way to mark five years of a reign that has consistently tried to find common ground between tradition and modernity.
When Ogiame Atuwatse III was crowned on August 21, 2021, he became the youngest monarch in the more than 500-year history of Warri Kingdom. Educated in the United States and coming to the throne with experience outside the traditional institution, he represented a new generation of leadership while inheriting one of Nigeria’s oldest and most historically significant monarchies.
The years since have seen the Palace place considerable attention on education, enterprise, healthcare, culture and opportunities for young people, while strengthening connections between the Kingdom and an increasingly global Itsekiri community. Alongside him, Olori Atuwatse III has developed her own considerable body of work, particularly around women, children and entrepreneurship. Through initiatives including EstablishHER, her advocacy has increasingly focused on giving women access not simply to assistance, but to the tools and opportunities to build sustainable livelihoods.
The fifth coronation anniversary brought much of that work, and the thinking behind it, into focus.
Held under the theme “Global Homecoming – Celebrating Our Cultural Renaissance, Unity and Transformational Progress,” the wider ten-day anniversary combined the splendour expected of an ancient kingdom with conversations about where Iwere goes next. There was homage paying, music, traditional ceremonies, sporting activities, thanksgiving and the spectacular Royal Regatta. But alongside the colour and ceremony were the Itsekiri Development Forum, the Queen’s Business Conference, cultural and historical excursions and opportunities for Itsekiris at home and abroad to connect professionally and economically.
Perhaps that was the most important point of the Homecoming. Returning home was never intended to end with celebration. It was also an invitation to participate.
Five years is, of course, only a small chapter in the life of a centuries-old throne. But it is enough time to look back, take stock and begin asking what comes next. For Ogiame Atuwatse III and Olori Atuwatse III, this anniversary offered exactly that moment.
With the celebrations over and the first Global Homecoming now part of Iwere history, Konye Chelsea Nwabogor speaks with the Her Majesty, Olori Atuwatse III about the last five years, leadership and legacy, reconnecting a global Itsekiri community with home, and her hopes for the next chapter of Warri Kingdom.
His Majesty, Ogiame Atuwatse III, CFR
The Olu of Warri
Your Majesty, five years ago you ascended the throne with a very clear sense of the kind of Warri Kingdom you wanted to build. Looking back now, what are you most proud of, and where do you feel there is still work to be done?
I would rather speak in terms of gratitude than pride. First, I am most grateful for God’s faithfulness, because when I look back over these five years, I can see His leading all along the journey.
After that, I am grateful for our people. We developed a plan in consultation with our people, and we created the forums and programmes through which we would execute that plan. Yet I know that your best intentions can fall flat if the people do not buy in. Our people’s response has been largely positive, and there has been real enthusiasm because they are willing to see things change for everyone’s good.
As for what remains, the work of development is never finished. Even if everything around us became a utopia today, humans are made in such a way that we would soon be asking what the next thing is. So, I do not think about this in terms of arriving somewhere. There is still so much to do in every regard, from the mental emancipation and upskilling of our people to breaking socio-cultural barriers, so the development we are working hard to attract will be better appreciated and put to good use. We are also working hard to attract investment into our region.
The Itsekiri Global Homecoming brings together Itsekiris from home and across the diaspora. Beyond the celebration and pageantry, what would you like it to achieve for Iwere in practical terms?
Five years ago, we put out a call for our people to come home, and they have started to respond. Our people in the diaspora have a great deal to contribute in terms of networks, experience, and expertise. We want all of that to complement the efforts already underway at home. We want to build Iwere Land with them.
But I don’t want the Homecoming to be seen only through that lens. There is also something to be said for simply having stronger relationships with all our people, wherever they are. For any parent, even when your children leave home, you want to remain connected to them. You want to keep partnering with them for the legacy you share. That is why I will keep calling out to the global Itsekiri community, “Come home.”
Your reign has placed considerable emphasis on reconnecting the Itsekiri people with their culture while also presenting Iwere to a much wider world. How do you preserve what must never change while allowing the Kingdom to evolve with the times?
Our heritage has given us much that is worth holding on to. Our customs, art forms, language, and ceremony all carry meaning that the world can learn from and enjoy as much as we do. I am a proud keeper of that inheritance. I am also an advocate for purpose and progress, and I do not think those two positions are in conflict.
We love and value our traditions, and we appreciate our ancestors’ efforts because they have brought us this far. However, tradition is not the same as purpose. It is an aid to purpose. Purpose concerns direction. It keeps our actions, aims, and targets in focus, and it drives us to commit to our daily plans and long-term goals, which our traditions support. If we accord more sentiment to tradition and not enough focus to purpose, we will keep producing the same old results, and we risk preserving the past at the expense of the future.
Doing things differently from how we did them in the past requires the humility and boldness to challenge ourselves in truth, not sentiment. We should be constantly evaluating our traditions to see where our culture needs improvement and evolution. What must never change is who we are. How we express it in each generation is another matter entirely.
You have spoken about unity not only within the Itsekiri nation but among the different communities that share Warri. What do you believe traditional leadership can do today to strengthen that sense of common purpose?
Traditional leadership is the natural and spiritual rallying point of our people. A great deal flows from that head, all the way down through the body. So when we take positive action toward genuine development in this metropolitan area, it becomes easier to overcome the sentiments that would otherwise stall it. Modern development and culture are not in conflict. They can be brought together, and the forging of that hybrid is work that belongs to the traditional institution. That is where I believe our greatest contribution lies.
I want to say clearly that everything we do in my Kingdom is for our own benefit and for the benefit of the communities around us.
When you think about the next five years of your reign, what would you most like to see change in the everyday lives of your people, particularly the younger generation?
The children in our Love Gardens today are five-, six-, ten-year-olds. They are planting produce, nurturing, harvesting, and selling them. In five years, they will be teenagers who already know that they can produce something of value through the work of their own hands. That is a different teenager from the one who has only ever been told to wait for handouts.
Some of the children on our scholarships will be leaving secondary school and entering university, and many of them will be the first in their families to do so. The young people coming through our STEM and enterprise programmes will be building things and running businesses rather than looking for who will employ them. The women who come into EstablishHER today with a small trade will have had five years to grow it, and I expect many of them to be employing other people by then. In short, Warri people and communities will be contributors, at home and wherever else they find themselves.
What I want underneath all of that is for all of our people to be filled with real hope, and to have real avenues to fulfil their potential, while remaining proud of their heritage, their identity and their culture. From that place, I want to see them design and engineer things, inventions and solutions that add value to our society and improve our prospects as a people.
His Majesty, Ogiame Atuwatse III, CFR
The Olu of Warri
Your Majesty, five years ago you ascended the throne with a very clear sense of the kind of Warri Kingdom you wanted to build. Looking back now, what are you most proud of, and where do you feel there is still work to be done?
I would rather speak in terms of gratitude than pride. First, I am most grateful for God’s faithfulness, because when I look back over these five years, I can see His leading all along the journey.
After that, I am grateful for our people. We developed a plan in consultation with our people, and we created the forums and programmes through which we would execute that plan. Yet I know that your best intentions can fall flat if the people do not buy in. Our people’s response has been largely positive, and there has been real enthusiasm because they are willing to see things change for everyone’s good.
As for what remains, the work of development is never finished. Even if everything around us became a utopia today, humans are made in such a way that we would soon be asking what the next thing is. So, I do not think about this in terms of arriving somewhere. There is still so much to do in every regard, from the mental emancipation and upskilling of our people to breaking socio-cultural barriers, so the development we are working hard to attract will be better appreciated and put to good use. We are also working hard to attract investment into our region.
The Itsekiri Global Homecoming brings together Itsekiris from home and across the diaspora. Beyond the celebration and pageantry, what would you like it to achieve for Iwere in practical terms?
Five years ago, we put out a call for our people to come home, and they have started to respond. Our people in the diaspora have a great deal to contribute in terms of networks, experience, and expertise. We want all of that to complement the efforts already underway at home. We want to build Iwere Land with them.
But I don’t want the Homecoming to be seen only through that lens. There is also something to be said for simply having stronger relationships with all our people, wherever they are. For any parent, even when your children leave home, you want to remain connected to them. You want to keep partnering with them for the legacy you share. That is why I will keep calling out to the global Itsekiri community, “Come home.”
Your reign has placed considerable emphasis on reconnecting the Itsekiri people with their culture while also presenting Iwere to a much wider world. How do you preserve what must never change while allowing the Kingdom to evolve with the times?
Our heritage has given us much that is worth holding on to. Our customs, art forms, language, and ceremony all carry meaning that the world can learn from and enjoy as much as we do. I am a proud keeper of that inheritance. I am also an advocate for purpose and progress, and I do not think those two positions are in conflict.
We love and value our traditions, and we appreciate our ancestors’ efforts because they have brought us this far. However, tradition is not the same as purpose. It is an aid to purpose. Purpose concerns direction. It keeps our actions, aims, and targets in focus, and it drives us to commit to our daily plans and long-term goals, which our traditions support. If we accord more sentiment to tradition and not enough focus to purpose, we will keep producing the same old results, and we risk preserving the past at the expense of the future.
Doing things differently from how we did them in the past requires the humility and boldness to challenge ourselves in truth, not sentiment. We should be constantly evaluating our traditions to see where our culture needs improvement and evolution. What must never change is who we are. How we express it in each generation is another matter entirely.
You have spoken about unity not only within the Itsekiri nation but among the different communities that share Warri. What do you believe traditional leadership can do today to strengthen that sense of common purpose?
Traditional leadership is the natural and spiritual rallying point of our people. A great deal flows from that head, all the way down through the body. So when we take positive action toward genuine development in this metropolitan area, it becomes easier to overcome the sentiments that would otherwise stall it. Modern development and culture are not in conflict. They can be brought together, and the forging of that hybrid is work that belongs to the traditional institution. That is where I believe our greatest contribution lies.
I want to say clearly that everything we do in my Kingdom is for our own benefit and for the benefit of the communities around us.
When you think about the next five years of your reign, what would you most like to see change in the everyday lives of your people, particularly the younger generation?
The children in our Love Gardens today are five-, six-, ten-year-olds. They are planting produce, nurturing, harvesting, and selling them. In five years, they will be teenagers who already know that they can produce something of value through the work of their own hands. That is a different teenager from the one who has only ever been told to wait for handouts.
Some of the children on our scholarships will be leaving secondary school and entering university, and many of them will be the first in their families to do so. The young people coming through our STEM and enterprise programmes will be building things and running businesses rather than looking for who will employ them. The women who come into EstablishHER today with a small trade will have had five years to grow it, and I expect many of them to be employing other people by then. In short, Warri people and communities will be contributors, at home and wherever else they find themselves.
What I want underneath all of that is for all of our people to be filled with real hope, and to have real avenues to fulfil their potential, while remaining proud of their heritage, their identity and their culture. From that place, I want to see them design and engineer things, inventions and solutions that add value to our society and improve our prospects as a people.
Her Royal Majesty, Olori Atuwatse III
Queen consort of Warri Kingdom
Your Royal Majesty, the last five years have changed your life as much as they have marked a new chapter for the Kingdom. How have you personally grown into the role of Olori, and what has surprised you most about it?
From day one, His Majesty and I committed to using our roles to serve our people. But it’s one thing to know that going in, and another to start the work and realise how much there truly is to do. For me, as Olori, that meant orienting my life around advancing our people and our continent as a whole because I realised it is not enough to seek the development of our Kingdom alone. We must seek the growth of all, as that is the only way to truly sustain and scale impact.
I have grown in selflessness and wisdom, and the years have taught me my capacity to lean into the purpose God has given me, show His love through service, and change things. I have been pleasantly surprised by the power of individual determination coupled with collective wisdom and action. When I think about how much impact we’ve made from health outreaches to skills training, education, and more, I am grateful and encouraged.
Much of your work has centred on women, children, education and enterprise. What have your interactions with women across the Kingdom taught you about what they need most — not just in terms of assistance, but opportunity?
I have always known our women are capable; they are the backbone of families, communities, and our economy. The research tells us that plainly enough. However, knowing something from research and getting to know individual women very well are two very different experiences.
From my interactions, I have seen that what they need most is support that centres them, not the supporter, because their realities are complex and vary from one community to the next. For example, when the Foundation asked the people of Ologbotsere what they needed, they told us they needed education for their children. Their old school was run-down, so we built them a new one. Across Warri, our women did not want handouts; they simply wanted to be empowered to build for themselves.
That’s exactly what we did through EstablishHER, which trains and upskills them. I’ve seen the remarkable things our women have achieved with that support, with many of them starting or scaling businesses, and some going on to mentor and create opportunities for others.
Our women want long-term solutions for themselves, their children, and the generations after them, so our goal is to be enablers by providing infrastructure, skills training, healthcare, and other resources that create opportunities and enable them to take advantage of them.
The Itsekiri Global Homecoming is also about giving younger Itsekiris and those in the diaspora a stronger connection to where they come from. How do you make heritage meaningful to a generation whose lives may be increasingly removed from home?
His Majesty and I are custodians of our culture by virtue of position and because we genuinely love our history and our heritage. There is so much in it to love, so much to be proud of, and so much still to grow.
That is why it matters to us that every Itsekiri person, young or old, at home or abroad, is conscious of the fact that this Kingdom belongs to all of us. Some of our people come home at different times to visit family, while others seldom have the opportunity to. The Homecoming gave us all a reason to be home at the same time, to gather, and to enjoy our culture and heritage together. For many who saw the progress being made, it also renewed their desire to contribute.
So, we make our heritage meaningful by showing it and giving it the reverence and meaning it has always held. That works for our own people, and judging by how non-indigenous people responded to what they saw, it works well beyond them too.
You and His Majesty have worked together on initiatives that extend beyond the Palace, including the Royal Iwere Foundation and Elevate Africa. How do you balance being partners in marriage with being partners in a much larger vision of service and impact?
Sharing a vision has improved both our marriage and our service. When you work toward the same goal, you understand each other’s commitments without needing to explain them, and you act together to achieve more than either could alone.
The Royal Iwere Foundation began at home with our own people in the Kingdom. Elevate Africa followed, when it became clear that what we were learning in Warri could benefit the whole continent.
There has never been much to balance. Whatever we are building, we build it first as husband and wife, then as partners in service and impact. I am grateful for that every day.
Five years into this journey, what are you most proud of when you look at His Majesty’s reign — and what are you personally hoping the next five years will allow you to accomplish for the women, children and communities of Iwere?
What I am most proud of is our people and their commitment to the development of this Kingdom. The eagerness with which many of them have embraced programmes that help them grow is heartwarming, and I am also proud of the impact that we have made over these five years.
For the next five years, I am hoping for scale. More infrastructure, more skills development, and more work on mindset development, which matters every bit as much as the other two. I want to start seeing greater fruit from the seeds we’ve sown in our women, children, and communities across the different Royal Iwere Foundation programmes. I know we will, because as our children grow in knowledge, our women and youth in skills, and our communities in dignity and economic strength, the whole of Warri rises to a greater future.
