Pastor Olusegun Omoniyi, who heads the CAC branch at Onigbogbo in Atan Ota, is said to be critically ill after he was allegedly abducted and tortured by some OPC members. After being rescued by policemen from the Sango Area Command, the 45-year-old clergyman has also gone into hiding, fearful for his life as the OPC members had threatened to recapture and kill him.
Apparently, OPC members were acting on the instructions of some relatives of Pastor Omoniyi’s late wife, Omolade, who had vowed to deal with him over the sickness and subsequent death of the woman. Pastor Omoniyi and his wife married in 1999 and had a set of twins in 2000 but the duo were said to have died shortly after they were born.
Since the death of the children, the couple had not been able to have any child, which resulted in pressures from Omolade’s family. Early 2015, the wife was reported to have left the cleric despite entreaties from church leaders and relatives of the husband.
However, seven months after separating from the husband, the 42-year-old Omolade was attacked by a strange illness. She subsequently died from this and her family blame her estranged husband for it.
Pastor Omoniyi said: “She had told me that her family members didn’t want her to continue living with me but I begged her to stay. However, sometime in 2015, I went for a church meeting when some of her family members came and took away her property.
"Attempts at getting her family members to reconcile us were abortive as they said she had made her choice. However, in July 2015, I was told she was sick and on the instruction of the church leadership, I went with some other elders to give her N50,000 but her brother did not allow us to see her, saying I should go alone to see her, which we refused."
He added that in February 6, while he was leading a church programme around 10am, four men entered the church. Two of them were OPC members and the others, Adebayo and Stephen, were his wife’s relatives and while he was at the altar, the two OPC members said they had come to take him away.
“I told them that I would not follow them since I did not know where they were taking me to. They beat me up and one of them showed me a gun and said if I didn’t cooperate, he would kill me,” Pastor Omoniyi said.
He added that he was thrown into a car belonging to his wife’s eldest brother and was blindfolded throughout the journey. Pastor Omoniyi explained that he later found himself in Ijoko, the camp of the OPC, saying the men tortured him before taking him inside a clinic where his wife had been admitted.
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