Adire on wheels a project of the Adire Oodua Textile hub was launched at the Muson Centre, Lagos by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi.
Known for mentoring and empowering youths in different sectors, his imperial majesty believes the hub would help to build a critical mass of youths who would impact their communities in different ways.
“We need to continue to be very creative and come up with innovations. This is a beautiful innovation, adire wheel hub being powered and being driven by Princess Ronke Ademiluyi and we are very proud of the things she is doing.”
The Ooni added that the project would help to empower young people and direct their energy for positive use.
”This would take off a lot of our youths off the streets. You can imagine the impact. For instance, 10 of them can have a wheel like this and we would give them a catchment area to sell to people around after work. We will then spread it across the entire country. By virtue of that, our youths won’t need to be looking for employment, they can be self-employed.
This will boost local production and create employment for our youths.
“I am grateful for having the opportunity to relaunch and be more innovative and more creative. We all know what happened in 2019, the year of COVID and last year, when a lot of businesses shut down. We couldn’t have African fashion week in London and Nigeria. So, ending the year with the launch of the Adire on Wheels which is a project of the Adire Textile hub in Ile Ife is every reason to be grateful,” Ademiluyi said.
She goes on to talk about the two major aspects of the events which took place in Ile Ife recently.
”We did the Queen Moremi Ajasoro pageant in Ife Ife for the first time and we decided to use some of our Nigeria designers to kit the participants. We just thought it would be a good combination to have the African Fashion Week in Ife Ife and also promote fashion tourism because a lot of creative who had never been to Ife Ife
before, this was an opportunity for us to showcase Ife Ife to them.”
The colourful ceremony witnessed a combination of an adire beginners’ workshop, exhibition as well as musicals depicting creativity in all its ramifications.
Stakeholders and dignitaries turned out in great numbers to witness the event which was memorable.
Mr. and Miss Blind Nigeria attended and were the cynosure of eyes looking happy, gorgeous, and full of energy like other participants in attendance.
