Seeing double in Nigeria’s ‘twins capital of the world’
Al Jazeera
The global average birth rate for twins is around 12 per 1,000 births, but in Igbo-Ora, it is closer to 50 per 1,000.
On a normal day a visitor might pass Igbo-Ora with little more than a double take, wondering why so many pairs of residents wear matching clothes.
But this weekend left nobody doubting what makes the town in southwest Nigeria special.
With fanfare, pageantry, talent shows and even a royal visit, hundreds of people gathered in the self-proclaimed “twins capital of the world” to celebrate its unusually high rate of multiple births.
“There’s hardly a family here in Igbo-Ora that doesn’t have a twin,” said visiting Yoruba king Oba Kehinde Gbadewole Olugbenle, himself a twin.
Yoruba culture reveres twins and their first names are traditionally fixed – Taiwo meaning “one who tastes the world” for the eldest child, and Kehinde meaning “one who came after” for the second born.
