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By Bianca Iboma-Emefu
Founder of Word Assembly Ministries in Ilorin, Evangelist Isaac Omolehin, and more than 100 vulnerable residents of his Kwara State camp — including orphaned children, the elderly and mentally challenged women rescued from the streets — have remained homeless since police ordered a midnight evacuation in late May over an imminent bandit attack.
Omolehin, an outspoken Christian evangelist known for criticising denominational divisions in the Nigerian Church, said police arrived at the camp in the middle of the night of May 30 into May 31 and ordered everyone to flee immediately because kidnappers were on their way.
“The police came to my camp in the middle of the night and asked everybody to run because kidnappers were coming to attack me. The whole camp was deserted, and it has remained deserted,” he said.
Although Omolehin was away at the time, the bandits later arrived but found the facility empty. “They came, the bandits, but they didn’t meet anybody.”
The camp had housed orphaned children, a primary and secondary school, a hospital, an old people’s home and a rehabilitation centre for mentally challenged women and their children. All operations have collapsed.
“Bandits chased us out of that place. The school cannot open, the hospital is not functioning, and the patients and nurses all ran for their lives,” Omolehin said. More than 100 residents are now scattered across different locations because authorities have not declared the area safe for return.
Omolehin himself has gone into hiding with his wife and children. “I have a house I can’t enter. I have a car I can’t ride. I have to hide myself from the public. If I sleep here today, I’ll sleep somewhere else tomorrow. I’m homeless with my wife and children.”
Repeated appeals to the police — who ordered the evacuation — have yielded no clearance. “We wrote to the police because they were the ones who asked us to leave. We asked if it was safe for us to return because schools had resumed and we have over a hundred children that need to go to school. There has been no response.”
Similar reports to the Department of State Services and the Kwara State Ministry of Social Welfare, which oversees orphanages and rehabilitation centres, have also gone unanswered.
Three days after the Kwara incident, Omolehin’s village in Kogi State was attacked and some of his people killed. He said the kidnappers left the camp buildings intact, but thieves later looted refrigerators, fans, mattresses and other items.
Despite the threats and restrictions on his ministry — including a recent ban from preaching in Baptist churches — Omolehin has continued his public advocacy. He appealed directly to the Federal and Kwara State governments to restore security so the displaced can return, noting that some of the orphaned children had been referred to the facility by government authorities.
“I want to appeal to the government to improve security so that I can return to the camp with my family and all the people I look after. Some of the children in the orphanage were brought to us by the government. Even if they say they don’t care about the rest of us, what about the children they entrusted to us?”
