Dismantling Ibadan’s unholy temples
By Akin Oyedele, Ibadan
Monday, 3 Mar 2008

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Some of the victims rescued fr

What, perhaps, many people never thought could still be possible in a 21st century Nigeria played out in the country about a fortnight ago when the police discovered some rehabilitation centres in Oyo State. Considering the gross dehumanised state of the inmates of the centres, it has become so much doubtful if such places could aptly be referred to as rehabilitation centres.

Tucked in the remote parts of the ancient city of Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, are three torture chambers established in the names of rehabilitation centres and Arabic schools. The common features among these centres are that inmates are manacled like common criminals; they are subjected to mindless torture occasioning bodily harm, and death in some instances, in the process of exorcising the evil spirit in them.

The female ones are sexually abused and subjected to unsafe abortion by the ‘men of God rehabilitating them.’

The Police Public Relations Officer at the state command, Miss. Olabisi Okuwobi, said intelligence at the disposal of the police suggested that there were 30 of such centres in Ibadan alone, where might is right. Life cannot be more brutish and short in these centres than the scenario painted by Thomas Hobbes, with the reported death of about 63 inmates from at least, three of such centres already uncovered by the police.

Welcome to Orogun, Eleta in Sango and Ojoo areas of the city where a total of 115 inmates were evacuated in the last two weeks, looking gaunt and malnourished. 17 of the tormentors-in-chief are already in police net.

The promoters of these three centres, Alhaji Abdul Ganiyu Imoniyi, Alfa Ali Ademola and Alfa Mohammed Olore, claimed that they were only engaged in Arabic teaching, spiritual healing and rehabilitation of social miscreants voluntarily brought to the centres by their parents or family members. This claim was corroborated by the inmates and their gullible and ill-informed parents.

The sorry look of the inmates, their rashes-ravaged skins, especially the buttocks, which were intertwined with scars of lashes, suggested that the rehabilitation centres are indeed torture chambers.

The Director, Centre for Religious Tolerance and Civil Right, Dr. Sabitu Olagoke, who is also the founder and spiritual head, Shafaudeen in Islam Worldwide, described the activities of the operators of the centres as condemnable in all their ramifications.

His views were shared by the Oyo State Coordinator, National Council of Muslim Youth Organisations, Alhaji Moshood Akintola.

Olagoke said Islam detested camping people under unhygienic conditions or chaining them. This, he said, was a gross violation of the victims’ human rights. He called on well-meaning Muslims to condemn the act before more people got trapped.

The Muslim leader, who is also Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, said the arrested leaders were hiding under the cloak of religion to engage in traditional healing.

He said, “When you enter some homes where these Muslims say they are rehabilitating people, you think you are in the house of a herbalist.

“If we have to be objective, government needs to condemn the acts in their totality. These people are not scientific in their approach to treatment of the inmates. In the past, some Christians also used to have these centres where they chained people, which they called Agbala.

“But these Christians stopped it with time. The Christians are now of age, but some Muslims and traditionalists still remain in the (old) practice.

“You will discover that majority of those who engage in these despicable acts are not necessarily out to help the people, but to help themselves.

“What we expect in religious circles is that clerics should emphasise the need to teach the scriptures and morality. When you teach scripture, people will be able to know their rights and use religion to realise their potentials.”

Olagoke, who linked mental illness and other social problems confronting the people to hunger, called on the government to empower the people, saying “once you are not hungry, you will form resistance to psychological problems that people capitalise on to milk others.”

He said kudos should be given to the government for beaming its searchlight into discovering “this anathema in our social lives.”

Similarly, the NACOMYO boss said Islam encouraged people to reform those that are seen as social miscreants, but noted that the practice of torturing them was unIslamic.

Akintola said, “Islam abhors inhuman treatment of fellow human beings, not even animals. We are asked to be kind to animals. But from our interaction with these inmates, we discovered that these stories are exaggerated.”

For instance, he claimed that those rescued from the Imoniyi camp told him that they had to fabricate the story to get back at some of the followers of the man who were in the habit of torturing them.

Rather than a total clampdown on these centres, he called on the government to come to their aide by assisting them to have a decent environment and by donating food items to them.

He summed it up by saying that the failure of the various tiers of government to put in place social security was responsible for the thriving business of rehabilitation centres.

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Nigeria: 60 Feared Killed In Another Ibadan Torture Chamber
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Nigeria: 60 Feared Killed in Another Ibadan Torture Chamber
Sunday, February 24, 2008 - Ola Ajayi Ibadan

ABOUT sixty people were said to have died and buried in a newly-discovered illegal detention camp in Ojoo area of Ibadan.

This brings to 62 the number of people alleged to have been tortured to death by the founders of the three illegal detention camps discovered so far in the ancient city. Nine suspects have been arrested. Acting on a tip-off, men of the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) stormed the camp on Friday and rescued 92 victims including children who have allegedly spent many years there. There were bruises all over their bodies. Among them were six girls who were alleged to have been sexually abused.

When Sunday Vanguard spoke with some of the inmates, they alleged that the prime suspect, Mohammed Olore, who claimed to be an Islamic cleric, only used the school to cover up, adding that he engaged in selling parts of those who died among them to influential people who patronized him. They pointed out that at least two to three people died within a month through torture and they were always taken to Sasa Cemetery for burial by the 'cleric' who later removed their parts and sold them.

Sunday Vanguard also gathered that some people including a mobile policeman from Arowomole in Ogbomoso were kidnapped and detained at the camp. The arrest of the prime suspect and his collaborators almost led to a full-blown confrontation between the police and loyalists of the suspects.

Oyo State police commissioner, Prince Udom Ekpoudom, while parading eleven suspects in Ibadan, in connection with the case, said "the experience at the scene was unbelievable and the treatment given to their captives, 90 per cent of them, was dehumanizing. Six of the hostages who are females complained that they were subjected to series of intimate acts against their wish. It was also discovered that illegal abortions were carried out on pregnant inmates in the camp. It was a situation where human beings were shrunk to skeletal frame with severe burns and rashes.

Grievous inhuman treatment usually resulted in multiple deaths of the inmates who were subsequently buried without any report to the police. The hostages in unison confessed that bodies of deceased inmates were usually eaten by their captors."

The police boss, an assistant inspector general of police, AIG, confirmed that some influential people had been pestering him to release the suspects arrested earlier at Olomi in connection with illegal detention but he would not be cowed into releasing them without being tried by the court. But the prime suspect in the latest torture chamber, denied all the allegations, saying they were made to disparage his person.

He stated that "the policemen came to our Olore Islamic School at Ojoo and arrested me and my students. We don't kill in our place as alleged. The motive for establishing the school, he stated, was to heal numerous people who are mentally-deranged. Also, we teach them Quran."

On the allegation of torture, he confessed that those who misbehaved were beaten but said none of them died except the two who were sick and taken to their parents. "We also beat them when they escaped. Somebody yet to be cured of insanity but ran away would be beaten when caught. The allegations they were leveling against me are false.

I did not beat anybody to death. All they are saying is just to implicate me. They are saying that just to paint me black. The water and the bones that were said to have been taken from the bodies of those that died should be taken to the doctors for examination to ascertain whether it is true or not. If anybody is sick, we hand him over to his parents to take care of him. Two of them died in the custody of their parents."

One of the suspects, Sherif Salami, who was alleged to have killed more than fifteen inmates, also denied the allegation, saying they were unfounded and malicious. According to him, "they are lying. They brought me too to the place just like any of them. What they are saying is to implicate me so that they can be released. This is my eighth year in this school." When asked why all the inmates were accusing him of having killed about fifteen people, he noted that it was because they did not like him since he was always punishing them when they erred. "We beat them when they erred. It is a lie that some people died. Anytime any of them fell sick, his parents were invited to come and treat him."

The suspects who are helping the police in their investigations, besides Olore and Salami, areDauda Atanda, Mohammed Adeyemi, Yusuff Owolabi, Ismail Balogun Lukman Olalekan, Alfa Taye Ogunlofin and Adeola Adeniyi. Among the callers at the police station yesterday were the Are Musulumi of Yorubaland, Alhaji Azeez Arisekola, and the former Commissioner for Justice in the administration of Senator Rashidi Ladoja, Barrister Adebayo Shittu.
NigeriaDailyNews.Com
http://www.nigeriadailynews.com/

This is pathetic. The gov-Ajumobi has got a lot of work to do.

First to comment, end time Tinzs

Seun really? Your bias is that high? An obvious fb material hidden away because it is from your region.

Hmm okay oo.