…want world leaders to emulate virtues

By Gabriel Ewepu

CIVIL Society Organisations, CSOs, Friday, mourned Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, after the announcement by Charles III on Thursday.

Speaking with Saturday Vanguard, the Country Director, Action Aid Nigeria, AAN, Ene Obi, described the late Queen of England as a great iconic whose composure is worthy of emulation.

Obi said: “The Queen is someone we have known all our lives. She has been a ruler and led all of these years.

“One feels she is always there. Her composure is something that is worthy of emulation.

“She talked about unity a lot, wanted maintenance of the Commonwealth features, which leaders tried to keep while she was alive.

“She was a great icon and pillar indeed.”

Meanwhile, she (Obi) said her death came to the ActionAid family as a shock “with that ease and was a shock to everyone. We pray the soul of the Queen of England rest in peace.

“But we send our condolences to the people of Great Britain at this time of their mourning and to the c
Commonwealth as well because this is a ruler they have known.

“What comes of the new King, Charles III, though we wil listen to his speech soon.”

Also the Country Director, Global Rights Nigeria, Biodun Bayeiwu, described the late Queen of England as a monarch that demonstrated amazing dexterity.

Bayeiwu said, “As the longest reigning monarch of the last of the empires, Queen Elizabeth held sway over the entire world.

“Beyond the brutal atrocities of the Empire, she demonstrated amazing dexterity to leading and adopting to change in a rapidly evolving world.

“In the 70 years of her reign, she led her country’s image from being the iron gripped malevolent colonialist power to the benevolent leader of the Commonwealth.

“Also, in a world in which women were regarded as weak and fickle, she proved those assumptions about women leaders to be false.

“Through the reigns of 15 Prime Ministers, six popes, a third of American core history and the entire evolution of almost all of the British colonies including Nigeria, she remained ‘Empress’ trading iron gloves for fibre glass ones.

“There is a lot not to emulate in the things she represented.

“However, as a person, she exuded great humility and grace, and yet at the same time she held the image of unflinching power.

“She listened to her people – and often yielded in the direction ‘they’ were inclined to go.

“She managed relationships with sagacity and warmth. As the last true empress, she was a living legend who managed to evoke a Stockholm syndrome hold on the nations that her country had brutalized.

“She is one of the reasons why most of the world still speaks English today – Not of their own will. But by political and economic compulsion.

“While I am not enamoured by what that history stands for in particular, we all must applaud the curtain call of an undisputed modern world shaper. Queen Elizabeth was a great woman.”