By - Rev Isaac Omolehin says his Idofian camp in Kwara State has stood empty since police ordered a midnight evacuation over a bandit attack threat in late May
- More than 100 residents, including orphaned children, patients and rehabilitated women, remain scattered with nowhere confirmed safe to return to
- Cleric says appeals to police, DSS and the state welfare ministry have gone unanswered for months, while a separate attack struck his home village in Kogi days later
Months after police forced him to abandon his church-run camp in the dead of night, the founder of Word Assembly Ministries says he and more than a hundred people under his care remain displaced, with no official word on whether it’s safe to go back.
Rev Isaac Omolehin detailed the ordeal in a statement issued through his spokesperson, Grace Edema, on Saturday, saying police showed up at his facility in Idofian, in Kwara’s Ifelodun Local Government Area, sometime around midnight between May 30 and 31, and ordered an immediate evacuation over intelligence that bandits were coming for him specifically.
He wasn’t at the camp when officers arrived, but says the facility emptied out entirely on the strength of that warning, and has stayed empty since. The attackers did eventually show up, he said, but found nobody there.
A Facility Built for the Vulnerable, Now Standing Empty
What makes the camp’s abandonment especially costly, by Omolehin’s account, is who it was built to serve. The compound housed a primary and secondary school, a hospital, a home for elderly residents, and a rehabilitation centre for women rescued off the streets with mental health conditions, some with children of their own. All of that stopped functioning the night the camp emptied. Staff, patients and students scattered along with everyone else, and Omolehin says the buildings themselves have sat untouched by the bandits, though looters have since broken in repeatedly to strip the compound of appliances and furniture, a separate crime he draws a sharp line under from the original threat.
The cleric himself has been living without a fixed address since the evacuation, moving between locations with his wife and children rather than returning to a home he says he can no longer safely enter.
Government Agencies Have Stayed Quiet
Omolehin says he’s written to the same police authorities who ordered the evacuation, asking directly whether the area is now safe enough for the children in his care to resume school. He says that letter has gone unanswered, as have similar appeals sent to the Department of State Services and Kwara’s Ministry of Social Welfare, which oversees orphanages and rehabilitation facilities in the state.
He’s pressing the point partly because some of the orphaned children now displaced from the camp were originally placed there by government referral, which he argues creates an obligation the authorities have yet to honour.
AfrikTimes could not independently verify the sequence of events with the Kwara State Police Command. The Police Public Relations Officer, Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi, did not respond to calls or messages seeking comment as of the time of filing.
A Second Attack, Days Later, in a Different State
Omolehin says the danger didn’t stay contained to Kwara. Three days after the failed raid on his camp, he says attackers struck his home village in Kogi State instead, killing residents there in what he frames as a continuation of the same campaign against him once the Idofian attempt failed.
A Cleric Known for Friction, Unmoved by the Cost
Beyond the security threat, Omolehin has faced separate pushback tied to his public criticism of denominational divisions within the Nigerian church, including a ban imposed roughly a month ago barring him from preaching in Baptist churches. He says neither that backlash nor the broader hostility toward his ministry has changed his approach, framing the resistance as something he expected from the outset of his public ministry.
For now, his central appeal remains directed at the state and federal government rather than at his critics within the church, asking specifically for enough security investment at Idofian to allow the displaced children, patients and elderly residents to return home.
