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10-year-old boy wins in mountain climbing festival

By Babs Odukoya
21 December 2009   |   8:20 pm
From Niyi Bello, Akure A TEN-YEAR-OLD boy, Sunday Akinwunmi, has emerged winner of the maiden Mare Festival in the rocky town of Idanre, Ondo State, for climbing 2,000 feet of steep mountain surface with bare hands and feet while professional mountaineers were using ropes and other gadgets.

_ For his efforts, which the state Governor Olusegun Mimiko, said typified the traits of gallantry and courage of the average Ondo State youth, the lad was awarded a state-sponsored scholarship up to the university level.

_ Hundreds of local and international tourists, as well as the local population of Idanre, a town completely surrounded by towering rocky walls, participated in the three-day event.

_ Packaged as an avenue to make the town a global destination for tourists by the state government in collaboration with Motherland Beckons, a tourism consultancy firm, the festival also exhibited the customs and traditions of the people through a carnival of dancing and drumming.

Several international tourists, who were drawn to the event by the massive publicity that heralded the fiesta, expressed satisfaction with the organisation and the potential of the carnival to become one of the best in the world’s tourist scene.

_ While speaking at the closing ceremony on Saturday, Mimiko pledged to harness all the potential of the state to fast-track its development, stressing that the festival would contribute to the economic development of the people of the state.

The governor, however, said his administration was ready to continue to give Mare Festival what its takes to move it to greater heights to put the state on the world’s tourist map.

“The renaissance for the new Ondo State has started and there will be no looking back. As a government, we are ready to provide an enabling environment that will make the people develop economically and socially”, he declared.

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