When Igbeti hills hosted over 50,000 tourists on Easter Monday

The historic town of Igbeti in Olorunsogo Local Government of Oyo State played host to over 50,000 domestic tourists from around Nigeria who joined indigenes of the town to celebrate 2017 Easter reunion fiesta, tagged jeans Carnival and hiking activity at one of the prominent hills called Iyamopo.

Known as the town of 16 hills (Ilu Oloke merindinlogun), Igbeti is endowed with revere tourism potential with evidences of untapped natural resources that rate the town as an economic goldmine ready to be tapped.

For the past six decades the town has made it a tradition to always converge annually on one of the 16 hills of the town, to worship, pray and thank God for protection of life and property which is a tradition to commemorate the significant of the hills as history holds it that the hills served as protection for the town during wars and also shield them from invaders and enemies attacks.

However the last eight years, according to indigenes of the town has been more eventful because of innovations which have provided different leisure activities for tourists who has continue to make loyal returns to the iyamopo hills.

This year’s edition of the Jeans Carnival which got to its climax with hiking and tour of the sacred sites at the top of the Iyamopo hill, took tourists to the Iyamopo cave, Ogun cave, orogun meta gorge, relics of ancient wall at the top of the Hill among other exciting touristic sights and sounds of Igbeti.

One of the visitors, Mr Zeeto Pella, said this year’s edition was his third and he will continue to patronise the town of 16 hills because of the unique formation of rocks and landscape. According to Pella, “Honourable Bosun Oladele has made a remarkable statement with this uncommon feat to promote domestic tourism. My first time here was three years ago and since then I have been making it a preferred destination every Easter.

“We need more people like Honourable Bosun with a special commitment and passion to create awareness that attract friends and family members from within and outside Nigeria to spend three days in Igbeti. “There is nothing too special abroad which is not here we have to start looking inward to repackage our domestic tourism to attract foreign exchange, jobs and investment.”

During the guided tour of the Iyamopo hill by Honourable Bosun Oladele, visitors and tourists from Nigeria and diaspora had a swell time amidst leisure entertainment as they were taken on a point-to-point site tour to see different mysteries that made the Iyamopo hill unique.

Speaking at the event, a Member of House of representative, Honourable Bosun Oladele explained that Igbeti town is a sleeping giant in terms of tourism, cultural and economical potential which needs a serious attention in the area of awareness to get attention of relevant agencies and government to harness the rich deposit of natural resource in the town.

“The Igbeti Hills harbor plethora of tourists attraction that could boost the economy of the people in no time and coupled with the interest, passion and unbiased commitment of the people is a good sign of fortune for the town and the state at large.

“You could see that there was nobody climbing the hills today with sadness or sorrow on their faces. It was smiles all through, fun all through, enjoyment and merriment.

“We are looking to see if we are able to attract enough global and national interest to come here and see what we are doing and fashion out sustainable ways to key in.

*If you notice some of the people that were equally in my team today some of them are Muslims. Equally Easter picnic fun fair and you see Muslims joining us because there is nobody that is an indigene of this town or even visitors seeing people climbing that would not join to go and see what is happening.

So that is the kind of interests that built and bond the people together locally. People even forget that it was an Easter celebration. We just knew that it was a holiday and everybody wanted to enjoy and be part of the holiday and that is what we have done today.

“We keep getting ideas each year we do this and we hope that the corporate Nigeria will still be getting ideas and having a feel of the silent tourism revolution that is about happening here.

*We have seen that we can really rekindle the interest and we have the potential to get the corporate world to key in and showcase what they do by partnering with us. So, the thing that we need to start to think of now is how do we get partners?

According to Oladele, “For corporate sponsorship, this is a goldmine but because the successive governments and people don’t see that, they don’t know that we are sitting on a goldmine so we need to sensitise the people, the government and also seek partnership to be able to move forward in our dreams to open the town to investment and tourists.

But on my own, l have been able to do that out of my personal purse. It is not a government thing and each time I invite friends from all over the globe here it is for that purpose.

So, how do we move forward? It is by ensuring that we have sponsorship, that we have partnership. And when you sponsor such a thing and you start attracting global interest, it means that your brand is going global.

So people that know about branding will tell you that is a fantastic one because there nothing as good in marketing than building a global brand.