• Latest
  • Trending
  • All
Tourism: My Journey To Ado Awaye Suspended Lake

Tourism: My Journey To Ado Awaye Suspended Lake

April 1, 2017
House of Reps Commends Local Contractor on Ogoni Clean-up Progress

It’s Time Akpabio, Abbas, And Lawmakers Have Mercy On NASS Retirees By Taiwo Adisa

May 25, 2025
Oyo Council of Obas Bill: Olugbon Calls for Halt, Cites Lack of Consultation

Olugbon Princes Accuse Soun Mogajis of Ingratitude, Historical Revisionism, Set Record Straight

May 24, 2025
North Central PDP Convention: Gbenga Hashim Profile, Billboards Flood Jos As Return To Party Sparks Excitement

North Central PDP Convention: Gbenga Hashim Profile, Billboards Flood Jos As Return To Party Sparks Excitement

May 24, 2025
Oyo Council of Obas Bill: Olugbon Calls for Halt, Cites Lack of Consultation

Ogbomoso Mogajis Reply Olugbon, Says ‘He Doesn’t Have The Aura Or Charisma Of An Oba’

May 24, 2025
2027: Unity, Greater Membership Drive Top Highlights Of Oyo North PDP Senatorial Meeting

2027: Unity, Greater Membership Drive Top Highlights Of Oyo North PDP Senatorial Meeting

May 24, 2025
Madux Vision FC Crowned Champions of AFIJIO Teens Football League Organized By SADI Nigeria

Madux Vision FC Crowned Champions of AFIJIO Teens Football League Organized By SADI Nigeria

May 24, 2025
Global Tax Body Commends FIRS Chairman’s Exemplary Leadership

Global Tax Body Commends FIRS Chairman’s Exemplary Leadership

May 24, 2025
Akin Alabi Installed As Jagun Olubadan, Charged To Attract More Developmental Projects

Akin Alabi Installed As Jagun Olubadan, Charged To Attract More Developmental Projects

May 23, 2025
TOPS ASUP Hails Makinde For Constituting Governing Council, Wishes Them Success

TOPS ASUP Hails Makinde For Constituting Governing Council, Wishes Them Success

May 23, 2025
Voting Bill: Islamic Scholar Slams Proposed Law as ‘Joke of the Century’

Voting Bill: Islamic Scholar Slams Proposed Law as ‘Joke of the Century’

May 23, 2025
Capital Gardens Warn Premium Homes, Others To Stay Off Hampton Estate Disputed Land

Capital Gardens Warn Premium Homes, Others To Stay Off Hampton Estate Disputed Land

May 23, 2025
Nigerian Air Force School of Finance and Accounts Commissioned in Ibadan

Nigerian Air Force School of Finance and Accounts Commissioned in Ibadan

May 23, 2025
">
  • InsideOyo
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Submit A Story
  • Advertise with us
  • Support Us Today
Monday, May 26, 2025
  • Login
  • Home
  • Political News
    • #OyoDecides – Oyo Elections 2023 I Live Updates
  • General News
  • Special Reports
  • Oyo Campus Gist
  • Jobs
  • Opinion
  • Interview
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
">
">

Tourism: My Journey To Ado Awaye Suspended Lake

by InsideOyo
April 1, 2017
in Special Reports
1
Tourism: My Journey To Ado Awaye Suspended Lake
">

Adeolu Akande, an indigene of Otu, headquarters of Itesiwaju Local Government of Oyo State who is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State‎ who was at Ado-Adaye area of Iseyin Local Government writes about his experience.

There are only two suspended lakes in the world. The Hanging Lake in Colorado, United States of America and the Ado Awaye Suspended Lake in Oyo State, Nigeria. A suspended lake is a body of stagnant water on the mountains.

RelatedPosts

What It’s Like To… Attend The AU Summit By Adesewa Olofinko

Controversy As Multi-million Naira Constituency Projects Collapse in Ibadan School

JUST IN: FG Declares Tuesday As Public Holiday To Mark Eidul-Mawlid Celebration

ADVERTISEMENT

The Hanging Lake in Colorado is located at the Canyon, about 11 kilometres east of Glenwood springs. The Ado Awaye Suspended Lake is located in Ado Awaye, 20 kilometres out of Iseyin, headquarters of Iseyin Local Government in the Oke Ogun area of Oyo State. The fact that Ado Awaye is one of the only two Suspended Lakes in the whole world makes it an instant destination choice for tourists. The other suspended lake, Hanging Lake in Colorado attracts a minimum of 131,000 tourists per annum and the upsurge in the number of Artists in the three years preceding 2014 forced the American Forestry Authority to embark on multifarious strategies to reduce the number of tourists thronging the location. This is because the deluge of visitors had started to have negative impacts on the eco system of the Suspended Lake.

It is not so with the Ado Awaye Suspended Lake. The lake remains only a potential tourist destination and source of revenue for the government and a potential driver for the economic development of the area in which it is located.

I visited the Lake in search of idle resources that could translate the economic potentials of Oyo State to reality. The lake is located on Iyake Mountains that sprawl around the sleepy town of Ado Awaye. The journey to the lake on the mountain top is not one for the faint hearted. A stair of 369 steps leads through a bush path to the plains on the mountain top. A litany of artefacts and earth shards are evidence of human habitation of the mountains in the past. It takes about one hour of rigorous climbing to get to the mountain top. Local accounts claim the mountains were homes to immigrant Awori dwellers that chose the mountain top as refuge from rampaging Dahomey Armies in the 19th century. They were the Ado people. As the account goes, when they relocated to the mountain foot after the wars, they met the inhabitants of Awaye. The two communities chose to live together hence the compound name of the town, Ado Awaye. The entire Yorubaland was a theatre of war in the 18th and 19th centuries as Yoruba kingdoms fought internecine wars of supremacy fuelled by search for war captives to sell into the international slave market. The Aworis today populate Lagos and Ogun States in Nigeria while the territories previously in Dahomey form part of present day Republic of Benin, some distance across the Nigerian borders from Ado Awaye. The first major tourist site on the mountains is the Shagi Rock, a spectacular rock formation. The locals believe it is home to a god that answers prayers. The advent of Christianity and Islam changed all that. But the edifice remains in the many dwellers of the town that bear the name of the god that supposedly live in the rock. Mostly in their 60s, these individuals were products of supplications made to the god of Shagi by women who went to the mountains to appease the god to bless them with the fruit of the womb.

ADVERTISEMENT

Iyake Lake is the most prominent attraction on the mountains. It is a diameter shaped lake with clean turquoise colour water. No one knows the depth of the lake although local folktales claim some foreign tourists who attempted to establish its depth lost their lives in the process. Many folktales surround the lake. It is believed that the lake leads to another world. The lake is also credited with mysterious powers to solve personal and health problems. No wonder religious bodies throng the venue for prayers. Many visitors go away with bottles of the water which they believe contains medicinal properties and magical powers.

About two metres away from the lake is a spectacular hole which is called Agbomofunyake. It is a foot- like formation which accounts claimed was accessible to the Iyake Lake. Anyone who is pulled into the hollow formation ends up in the lake.

The elephant tree is a plant formation that is a replica of the face of the elephant. Tourists who are amused by the formation take turn to snap pictures with it. The formation has no mystical account of its formation. There are other attractions like the Iya Oniru Lake, located around the peak of the mountain. It never goes dry all through the year. There is the ese awon agba (footprints of elders), foot sized depressions which were believed to be footprints of the ancestors of the community and broken pieces potsherds that litter the mountains. – Archaeological evidence of human domicile on the mountains.

The Suspended Lake of Ado Awaye is one of the resources Oyo State could exploit to improve its revenue base, create jobs for its youths, attract foreign investors and create wealth for the local communities. There are many tourist attractions with such great potentials. These include the ancestral home of Bishop Ajayi Crowther where the tree he was tied to on capture as a slave boy still stands in Osoogu, the healing and fertility fish pond in Saki, cool and warm water spring in Oluyole Local Government in Ibadan, Captain Bower Tower in Ibadan, burial ground of the first, second and third Alaafin of Oyo and that of  the only female Alaafin in Oyo Ile, site of the Ark of Jerusalem in Agelu beside Ado Awaye which hosts an estimated one million religion tourists annually, Oke Irifin Palace in Ibadan, the palace of the Alaafin of Oyo, the old Oyo National Park, the 300-year-old tortoise, baba agba, at the palace of Soun of Ogbomoso, the Aso Oke weaving stations in Iseyin, the different colourful masquerade festivals in the communities and monuments of great men who had etched their footprints in the sands of time like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Ladoke Akintola, Chief Adegoke Adelabu, Chief Bode Thomas and so on.

Harnessing the potentials of these cultural, historical, archaeological and religious tourism sites require a comprehensive planning of local festivals and enhancement of tourist sites. The influx of tourists will spur investors to establish hotels, restaurants and entertainment activities along the routes of tourist sites. The exposure of tourists to other economic potentials of the state will promote investment in other sectors and tourism will become a major driver of the development of Oyo State. Oyo State will not need to depend on federal allocation for her sustenance and development.

Share this:

  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram
  • Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky

Like this:

Like Loading...
Tags: Adeolu AkandeAdo Awake Suspended Lakean indigene of Otugbinedion Universityheadquarters of Itesiwaju Local Government of OyoMy Journey To Ado Awaye Suspended LakeTourism in Oyo
">
Previous Post

Ajimobi Bags EKSU’s Doctorate Degree [SEE PHOTO]

Next Post

ADVOCACY: Free Kemi Olunloyo

InsideOyo

InsideOyo

InsideOyo is an independent news medium for up-to-date events and happenings within and around Oyo state, Nigeria.

Related Posts

What It’s Like To… Attend The AU Summit By Adesewa Olofinko

What It’s Like To… Attend The AU Summit By Adesewa Olofinko

by InsideOyo
February 27, 2024
0

Nigeria’s Adesewa Olofinko was selected as an African Union Media Fellow in 2023. She was the only Nigerian and one...

Controversy As Multi-million Naira Constituency Projects Collapse in Ibadan School

Controversy As Multi-million Naira Constituency Projects Collapse in Ibadan School

by InsideOyo
November 19, 2022
0

BY Innocent Duru After many years of defecating in bushes within and outside the school premises, teachers and pupils of...

FG Declares Monday June 14 Public Holiday

JUST IN: FG Declares Tuesday As Public Holiday To Mark Eidul-Mawlid Celebration

by InsideOyo
October 15, 2021
0

The Federal Government has declared Tuesday  October 19th, 2021  as Public Holiday to mark this year’s Eid-ul-Mawlid Celebration in commemoration of the...

Advantages of Air Transport

Advantages of Air Transport

by InsideOyo
May 27, 2021
0

Air transport is the recent mode of transport. It the fastest way of travelling since there is no need of...

Next Post
ADVOCACY: Free Kemi Olunloyo

ADVOCACY: Free Kemi Olunloyo

Please login to join discussion

Are YOU in distress? Call Oyo State Emergency Number NOW!!!

oyo State Emergency Number

Click to download InsideOyo.com App

Join Our WhatsApp Group

Copyright © 2025 Inside Media

Navigate Site

  • InsideOyo
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Submit A Story
  • Advertise with us
  • Support Us Today

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Political News
    • #OyoDecides – Oyo Elections 2023 I Live Updates
  • General News
  • Special Reports
  • Oyo Campus Gist
  • Jobs
  • Opinion
  • Interview

Copyright © 2025 Inside Media

%d