Popular pastor known for sheltering orphans and the homeless forced out of his camp by bandits

The camp housed more than 100 vulnerable residents, including children referred by the government, and has remained empty since the evacuation.

Omolehin says he has appealed to authorities to confirm when it is safe to return, but has received no response.

Rev. Isaac Omolehin’s church camp in Idofian, Kwara State, has, for years, been a shelter for orphaned children referred by the government, elderly residents with no one to care for them, and mentally challenged women rescued off the streets along with their children.

Now, the founder of Word Assembly Ministries is homeless himself, hiding with his own wife and children after bandits threatened the same camp.

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.

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.

“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.

Omolehin says his hometown in Kogi State was attacked three days after the camp evacuation 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.