Lagos State Police Command says it has rescued 12 inmates and arrested a pastor, Joesph Ojo, who was allegedly using his church for rehabilitation activities.
According to Daily Trust, Ojo was arrested following a tip-off by Samuel Adam, the president of a non-government organization, Eagle Crime Awareness and Prevention Initiative.
The spokesman for the police in Lagos, Bala Elkana, said, “We have rescued 12 victims so far. They are 15 victims in number, but three couldn’t move when we got there. We are bringing the remaining three. Some of them were chained. We have commenced an investigation.”
Ojo, however, said that the victims were chained because of their condition, adding that their parents brought them to the church for healing.
He said, “The people were chained because of their condition. If I did not chain them, they would run. Many of them had put me in trouble in the past and that was why I chained them. When I see that they are healed, I unchain them.
“This is not a psychiatric hospital; all of them came for prayers and they had been taken to different psychiatric hospitals before they were brought to the church for deliverance. I saw the medical papers of some of them and it was when their parents tried conventional medicine and they were not cured that they brought them here.
“We do chain them for around three to four months and it is their families that do feed them; some of their family members come every day; some weekly; and some live with their children in the church. You may think that they are healed; for instance, one of them carried a big stone and wanted to use it to break another person’s head before he was stopped.”