By John Odunayo
All is set in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, for the 2024 Udiroko Festival, the celebration of the community’s traditional New Year on Wednesday August 21.
Already, visitors to or residents of the capital city can feel the celebration in the air as indigenes of Ado Ekiti are looking forward to Wednesday, the D-Day.
The Ewi of Ado Ekiti, Oba Rufus Adeyemo Adejugbe; the Ewi-in-Council and the Udiroko 2024 Planning Committee had craftily themed this year’s edition as “Sustaining the Celebrations of Our Historical Heritage and Cultural Essence as a Collective”.
Oba Adejugbe said at a press conference heralding the celebration that the yearly Udiroko festival is to celebrate the history of the ancient community.
The Ewi, who said that the festival has attracted numerous social, physical and economic development to the state capital and Ekiti State, said, “This year, we are calling attention to the deplorable state of the federal roads in Ekiti State”.
The monarch said that Udiroko Festival “is opportunity for prayers for the indigenes and residents and as well avenue to plan for a new year and the progress of our sons and daughters”.
He said, “It represents the community’s New Year. The major achievement is that there is relative peace in Ado Ekiti. The peace here is as a result of our prayers to our forefathers. That is what we are asked to do and every year, we have been obeying them religiously”.
Udiroko has been described as a unique festival that affords the Ewi, his chiefs, sons and daughters of the ancient kingdom of Ado Ekiti to converge once in a year at the palace with their friends to jollificate and celebrate.
Oba Adejugbe said that his recent visit to the National Assembly was to invite the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and other members of the Senate to the Udiroko Festival, with a view of making them see the condition of the roads and the hardship Ekiti people were passing through for remedial action.
Oba Adejugbe said, “Our son, the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele is there. We purposely went to the Senate. I told Governor Biodun Oyebanji before I went there that I wanted to use the opportunity of Udiroko Festival this year to bring Senate President, Goodwill Akpabio and the Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Olamilekan Adeola (Yayi), to Ado Ekiti for them to see our roads here and what we suffer.
The Eyegba of Ado Ekiti, Chief Mrs Bolanle Aderoju, said that the women of Ado Ekiti were fully prepared to make this year’s Udiroko Festival a success.
