At a dusty playground in southwest Nigeria, school children line up to return to their classrooms. Many of their faces have exact matches within the group. That is because an unusually large number of children in this part of Nigeria are identical twins. Sights like this can be seen everywhere in Igbo Ora. A sign even welcomes visitors to the “twins capital of the world.” Twins are common in the Yoruba ethnic group found in this part of the country. A 1970s study by a British doctor found that about 50 sets of twins were born out of every 1,000 births in the country’s southwest. That is one of the highest rates of twin births in the world. In Yoruba culture, twins are so common that they are traditionally given specific names. They are called either Taiwo or Kehinde, depending on whether they were born first or second. But even for Yoruba people, Igbo Ora is considered to be exceptional. Among the nearly 100 school children who gathered at the end of their break, 18 were twins.
