Police in Katsina State on Monday arrested a seventy-eight-year-old cleric, Mallam Bello Maialmajri, and owner of a spiritual rehabilitation centre in Daura where inmates were kept and subjected to inhuman conditions.
Katsina State Commissioner of Police, CP Sanusi Buba, who led the team to the centre on Monday where over sixty inmates were seen in terrible conditions, also arrested along with him were two men whose names were not disclosed.
The centre is located at Nasarawa quarters, the Sabongari area in Daura.
Buba, after going through the whole premises including where inmates sleep and perform chores, ordered the Divisional Police officer for Daura, Asp M.O.Wakili, and the police team from the town to take over the premises and ensure the security of the inmates.
The Commissioner inspected all the rooms inside the rehabilitation centre including where the chains that were being used to tie up the inmates were being kept.
The police commissioner said, “Based on the information the command received, we were here to see things for ourselves and take appropriate action.
“We learnt that the inmates here are over three hundred and because of the sordid and inhuman treatments they are being subjected to, the inmates revolted yesterday( Sunday). Some of the inmates escaped while these ones you are seeing now, about sixty of them stayed back.
“The inmates are from various parts of Nigeria, Niger Republic and from Katsina as well. But after we leave here today, I am going to meet the Emir of Daura and Governor Aminu Masari on the issue. We shall do the profiling of the remaining inmates with a view to determining where they are from and we shall thereafter appeal to their parents and their guardians to come and pick them up.
“As you heard from the inmates, apart from being subjected to inhuman conditions, some of their so-called teachers practised homosexual acts with them. Although the teachers escaped in the course of the confusion when my men came here when the inmates revolted, we shall get all of them and they would face the full wrath of the law.
“From what I have seen here, the old man who is the owner of this place and who is over 78 years old does not have the capacity and facilities to run this place again.”
One of the inmates, Abubakar Saminu, 16, from Yobe State, said his parents brought him to the centre because he was always stealing.
He said, “My parents brought me here because they believed I would be cured of my stealing problem. But, here, they would beat us, starve us and subject us to inhuman conditions.”
It was learnt that Mallam Maialmajri had already left the running of the centre in the hands of his son, Umar, who reportedly escaped police arrest.
The Emir of Daura, Dr. Umar Farouq, however, told the police Commissioner that the laws should be allowed to take its full course.
Unbelievable yet not surprising! But one question: What laws exactly does the emir of Daura, Dr. Umar Farouq, want to take its full course?