Jide Ojo
| credits: Punch NG
| credits: Punch NG
Beautiful!
Awesome! Scintillating, are some of the adjectives I used to describe
my experience at the Ikogosi Warm Spring during my visit to the tourist
site on Friday, April 4, 2014. I did not have it in my plan when I left
Abuja on Wednesday, April 2 to attend the national conference on how to
ensure credible governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states as well
as during the 2015 general election. Organised by the Centre for Civic
Education better known as Transition Monitoring Group, the conference
was held at the Fountain Hotel, Ado Ekiti on April 3. It attracted a
wide range of participants from the academia, civil society, the media,
political parties and the Independent National Electoral Commission. We
deliberated and came up with a potpourri of recommendations which we
believed would lead to the conduct of credible governorship elections in
Ekiti and Osun states come June 21 and August 9, 2014 respectively as
well as the February 2015 general election.
With the day’s event over, a friend,
Biodun Oyeleye, who is the Executive Director of New Initiative for
Social Development, a non-governmental organisation based in Ado-Ekiti,
baited me with the idea of a visit to Ikogosi Warm Spring. He offered to
take my wife and I there free of charge. Biodun kept to his promise. By
9am, he was at my hotel. Promptly, we set out on the about 40 minutes
drive to the flagship of Ekiti State tourist centres. As we left Ado,
the state capital, we passed through Ilawe and Erijiyan-Ekiti before we
berthed at Ikogosi where the warm spring is located.
The sight that beckoned to us as we
passed through the gate of the Ikogosi Warm Spring was breathtaking.
Uniformed security men, well-paved lawns, street lights, and the warm
reception by the management and staff we came in contact with settled us
in. Biodun played the role of a tourist guide. His organisation, NISD,
has held several workshops and conferences at the centre and he was well
known by the managers of the spring. An official guide and a cart were
later assigned to take us round the resort. We were shown the
conference halls, some of the well-equipped chalets, the amphitheatre,
the volleyball court, the natural warm water swimming pool, the
gymnasium, the shopping mall, the palm wine drinking joint where bush
meat is served with original palm wine and then the mother of all
scenes, the confluence point of the warm and cold springs. There we met
some primary school children who were brought on excursion by some of
their teachers. I was ecstatic. By my right was cold water and by my
left was warm water, what a wonder! A professional photographer was on
hand to capture the moment for a fee. No dulling!
Close to the confluence point is another
wonder. A palm tree and an Iroko tree sharing the same root and growing
like a Siamese. What a splendid work of God. We went further up the hill
to the source of the warm spring. Exhilarating! The vegetation
surrounding the spring is evergreen and the entire landscape is simply
exquisite. As we left the magical spot for the restaurant to have lunch,
members of staff of one of the telecommunications giants in Nigeria who
had come for possibly a workshop or a conference filed in to have a
look at the wonder of Mother Nature. On our way back, we abandoned the
cart that brought us and decided to walk our way back to the reception
area via the wooden bridge that once served as a footpath for visiting
tourists possibly before the road constructed for vehicular traffic.
Information garnered from the website of
Ekiti State Government says that there are many stories from the
indigenes of Ikogosi town regarding the origin of the warm spring. A
version says that both springs (Warm and Cold) were wives of the same
husband who turned to spring water in the wake of a rift and rivalry
between them. The hot and ill-tempered first wife was believed to have
turned to the popular warm spring while the cool-tempered second wife
turned to cold spring water. The husband became the undulating hills
that encompass the springs. A more tenable scientific explanation is
that the deeper a body of water goes underground, the hotter it becomes
and if by chance it is forced back to the surface through some earth
fault, the temperature will be relatively high. The natives believe that
the water has therapeutic effect as it is said to have potency to cure
some diseases such as arthritis and guinea worm, among others.
The Baptist Mission in the early 50s
reportedly established a youth and conference centre and other
conveniences on a hill adjacent to the warm spring area. This started
attracting different people from far and near, as even foreigners
started visiting the centre to see the work of nature. By 1978, the old
Ondo State acquired this unique tourist site from the Baptist Mission.
It became the property of the Ekiti State government when the state was
created on October 1, 1996. Unfortunately, successive governments in the
“Land of Honour”, as the state is called, allowed the “gold mine” to
fall into a state of disrepair. Significantly, Governor Kayode Fayemi
sourced for money to refurbish the centre, built additional structures
and restored the flagship status of the place. The remodelled Ikogosi
Warm Spring Phase One was commissioned on October 19, 2013. Over 20,000
guests were said to have visited the place during the last Christmas
season.
The Warm Spring currently has about 90
chalets and the atmosphere there is safe and serene. We were told that
plans are afoot to revive the moribund zoological garden within the
resort, build a heliport, 18-hole Golf Course, sports centre (football
pitch, lawn tennis and squash court), as well as water and sewage
treatment plant among other expansion projects on the 116 hectare resort
centre. Ikogosi is also the home of the Gossy Brand Spring Water. About
10 minutes drive to Ikogosi is another tourist centre, the Erinta
Waterfalls at Ipole-Iloro. Ekiti State also boast other tourist centres
such as Olosunta and Orole Hills in Ikere-Ekiti, Ero and Egbe Dams,
Fajuyi Park and the sacred lake of Erijiyan.
In my chat with the head of Strategic
Planning of the Ikogosi Warm Spring, Tolu Ajeyomi, the staff strength of
the resort currently stands at about 150. I intimated him of the need
for adequate maintenance of the state-of-the-art facilities at the
resort which he assured would be of great priority to his leadership.
In addition, I hope politicians
currently campaigning for the June 21 governorship poll in the state
will go about their activities without violence or any breach of peace
of the state. Any security threat has the potential of scaring away
tourists who may want to visit the state’s tourist sites.
As we took our leave after a sumptuous
lunch of pounded yam, vegetable, bush meat and croaker fish, I promised
my wife that someday soon, we would return to the beautiful Ikogosi Warm
Spring. However, the next time around, it won’t be a quick one by as
we did last Friday but with the full complement of the entire family.
Copyright PUNCH.
