What defines a person or a place is their experiences; their war stories, testimonies, scars and the survivors, and that is something that the little town of Idanre has in bulk, wearing its scars on its walls, carrying the footsteps of its heroes in the rocks, the names of those heroes on the leaves of its trees. The town looks its best when you are standing on the top of its mountains looking at the people who have pride and joy in their hearts because they survived and they tell these stories to their children at night.
Idanre is a small town in Ondo state, sharing a border with Akure town which is the state capital.
In the early 1800s, missionaries first arrived in Idanre town, and as the people were traditional worshipers they naturally rejected the proposal of a new religion and education, even to the point of throwing these missionaries into the believed ‘Evil Forest’ called “IGBO-ORE”, believing they wouldn’t make it out of there alive, but the people of Idanre were in for a shock when these missionaries made it out of there alive, it was another burning furnace story for those men of God. Their survival helped move their ministry along, making the people begin to have an interest in the God they serve whom they claim is more powerful than the one they currently worship, one who just proved himself by bringing those men out of the forest.
This inspired the people of Idanre to change the name of the forest to “IGBO-OWE”. That was the birth of Christianity in Idanre, in 1819, the first primary school was built and the missionaries were the first teachers.
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