By Chijioke Kingsley
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Prince Harry’s vist to Nigeria came 68 years after his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, visited the country four years before Nigeria’s independence.
In 1956, Queen Elizabeth II was welcomed to Lagos, Nigeria by a large crowd.
The queen’s visit was received with lots of fanfare.
Among those who came to receive her was the influential Federal Minister of Labour and Welfare, the late Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh.
In Lagos she was also received by traditional leaders like Chief Adeniji Adele II.
She also met with many chiefs during her 20-day visit that started on 28 January and ended on 16 February 1956.
The queen was hosted to a garden party in Lagos.
Who is the Queen?
The Queen is the ruler of the United Kingdom and the commonwealth nations.
During the British rule of Nigeria, Queen Elizabeth served as a monarch until 1960 when Nigeria gained independence.
She performed ceremonial duties in her capacity as the head of State of colonised Nigeria.
She came to Nigeria for the first time in 1956 as part of her royal tour to Commonwealth countries.
The second time she visited Nigeria was during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which took place from December 3 to 6, 2003.
The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2003 was the 18th time the Commonwealth heads met.
Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s then president, hosted the event in Abuja. Queen Elizabeth II came with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Grandson Prince Harry
Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, arrived Nigeria last Friday May 10, 2024 for the first time and spent three days tour to promote the Invictus Games.
Some Nigerian officials met them on arrival at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.
Afterward, they were taken out of a side door onto the jetty, and into a waiting blacked-out minibus.
The visit, which was primarily to promote the Invictus Games, came after Harry met the Nigerian team and the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa at last year’s competition in Dusseldorf, Germany.
It was there that he told the audience that Meghan was ‘rooting for Team Nigeria’, after discovering she had heritage from the West African nation.
Harry and Meghan visited Nigeria at the invitation of General Musa.
The couple visited a school before Prince Harry met injured service solders at a military hospital.
They also attended a training session for a charity organisation which collaborated with the Invictus Games, as well as a reception where families of military officers were honoured.
Harry and Meghan also visited Kaduna and Lagos before their departure on Monday via British Airways.
Recall that in 2022, the Duchess of Sussex revealed that she had discovered via a genealogy test that she was 43% Nigerian.
