By Thompson ABISOLA
No fewer than 2,000 sets of twins participated in the maiden edition of the Twin Festival held at Igboora, a community in Oyo State on Saturday.
The Igboora, the globally acclaimed home of twins, is the headquarters of Ibarapa Central Local Government in Oyo State.
The festival was jointly organised by Twins World Creations, Ibarapa Central Local Government, the Oyo State Government and the Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC).
Mr Toye Arulogun, the state Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, said the festival was organised to showcase Igboora town with her unique feature of highest rate of twins and multiple births in the world.
“The effort of government is to promote the town as the foremost twins’ tourism destination in the world. It is also to promote the town’s predominant meal, ‘Amala and Ilasa’, acclaimed to be responsible for the multiple births.
“We assure our people that the state government will not relent in its drive to promote its tourism potentials,” he said.
Arulogun said that twins were invited from far and near to celebrate twins and multiple births from Igboora in commemoration of the festival.
the Chairman of the local government, Mr Habib Ibrahim, said research affirmed that only Igboora could boast of 158 sets of twins for every 1,000 live births.
He said that available evidence attested to the fact that twins were born in Igboora land more than anywhere else in the world.
“A walk through the town can easily attest to this. There is no household without a history of at least a set of twins.
“This trend has made us not to see twin birth as a special phenomenon in Igboora, as it is elsewhere in the world,” he said.
The Olu-Aso of Iberekodoland, Oba Adedamola Badmus, who spoke on behalf of the traditional rulers at the event, called for collaborative efforts of all stakeholders to sustain the festival.
Badmus, who is also the Chairman, Local Organising Committee, noted that efforts should be made towards making the festival an international tourist event, adding it was a potential source of generating foreign exchange for Nigeria.
Some sets of twins from the local governments in Ibadan had converged at the Cultural Centre in Ibadan to join the train to Igboora.
They were received by their counterparts from Oke-Ogun and Ibarapa zones at the Methodist Grammar School in Igboora for the festival.
The carnival-like celebration had in attendance local government officials and traditional chiefs from the seven towns in Ibarapa zone of the state.
The occasion featured the foundation laying of the twins tower to commemorate the festival.
