Rev. Isaac Omolehin, founder of Word Assembly Ministries, has said he and his family fled his camp in Idofian, Kwara State, after police warned of an imminent bandit attack. The camp, which sheltered more than 100 vulnerable residents, including orphaned children referred by the government, has remained empty since the evacuation on May 30.
Midnight Evacuation Order
The crisis began just before midnight on May 30, when police arrived at the facility and ordered an immediate evacuation, warning of an imminent attack. Omolehin was away at the time. More than 100 residents fled into the dark, and the camp, which also ran a primary school, a secondary school and a hospital, has remained empty since.
"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 in a statement released through his spokesperson, Grace Edema.
Bandits Arrive After Evacuation
Bandits did arrive at the camp shortly after, but found it empty. Since then, Omolehin says he and his family have had nowhere settled to stay. "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," he said.
Omolehin says he wrote to the police, the Department of State Services, and the Kwara State Ministry of Social Welfare, the body that supervises orphanages and rehabilitation centres in the state, asking whether it was safe for residents to return. None of them, he says, has responded, even as schools sit empty and more than a hundred children remain out of class.
No Response From Authorities
"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," he said.
The threat hasn't stayed contained to Kwara as well. Omolehin says his hometown in Kogi State was attacked three days after the camp evacuation, and that people there were killed. "When they missed me here in Kwara, they went to my village and attacked my people," he said.
Looters Stripped Abandoned Facility
He also drew a distinction between the bandits and a separate wave of theft that hit the abandoned camp afterwards. The buildings, he said, were left standing, but looters later stripped the facility of belongings. "The kidnappers did not come to steal refrigerators, fans or mattresses. They came for human beings," he said.
His appeal, now weeks old, remains that the government act on the responsibility it already has toward the children it placed in his care. "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?" he said.
