Nigerian pastor accused of abusing children who fled Boko Haram

BENIN CITY, Nigeria: Deep in the tropical forest in southern Nigeria, an evangelical pastor runs a sprawling camp billed as a refuge for thousands of children who fled the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency in the north. Solomon Folorunsho, known as Pastor Solomon, says he is on a self-proclaimed mission to help humanity, creating the International Christian Centre for Missions (ICCM).

His camp in Benin City claims to provide accommodation, medical care and education for 4,000 children, “most of them orphans”, as well as 500 widows and missionaries, using funding from local institutions, NGOs and churches abroad. But witnesses AFP interviewed across Nigeria - children, their relatives, former missionaries and social workers paint a far darker picture of the pastor and the treatment of those in his care. “At first he’s very subtle, quiet - like somebody who wouldn’t hurt a fly,” one former church worker

said of the charismatic preacher. “I loved him, I loved his charisma.” But during months of interviews, witnesses detailed how those living at his 30-hectare facility frequently go hungry and thirsty and endure atrocious hygiene conditions. All accused the pastor of physical abuse, while some accused him of sexual harassment.

‘We don’t do abuse’

Pastor Solomon, aged in his 50s, admits having problems with food and sanitary conditions in the camp but denies any mistreatment. “There is no bad treatment here. We don’t do abuse,” he told AFP. “Feeding them is a challenge... but we don’t have anything to hide. We are helping humanity.” Concerns about the camp have a long history. Three years ago, the UN children’s agency UNICEF sent an assessment team to the site, who filed a report with damning conclusions.

“Pastor Solomon runs this camp as if it is his ‘kingdom’. He controls the movement and actions of every person in the camp through a group of ministers and specially selected children,” the team wrote in the confidential report, seen by AFP. The UNICEF investigators said what they saw, coupled with interviews with children, caregivers and NGO workers, prompted “strong concerns regarding the possibility that Pastor Solomon may be engaged in sexual activities, or at a minimum,

displaying grooming behaviors with girls in the camp”.

Witnesses also told AFP that around a dozen young girls work for the pastor as his personal servants and receive preferential treatment. “A girl who refused to work for him was punished and starved. When he beat you, he wouldn’t stop until you bled seriously,” said Rahila, a 16-year-old girl who left the camp several months ago. “He had names that he called different girls... He would comment on the size of my butt, and he would say our chests looked like pineapples or stuff like that,” she said. All the witnesses’ names have been changed to protect their identities.

‘We got beaten’

Other children and adults said that those who upset the preacher were treated brutally. “I was always hungry, there was never enough food or water. When we complained we got beaten with anything he could lay his hands on,” said 12-year-old Hauwa. “No one leaves Pastor Solomon without a scarwhether it is psychological or physical,” a former follower told AFP after hesitating at first to talk about his ordeal.

Convincing people to talk about their experiences with Pastor Solomon is a painstaking task. Some have refused to speak out for 20 years. “Most of the girls were coming from poor homes. They would sleep with

him and in exchange he would pay for their school fees,” said a former female follower who was at the church in the late 1990s. She said her going to the authorities about the abuse she experienced and witnessed was out of the question in a country where powerful men are rarely brought to justice. She was also scared of juju, the traditional black magic widely feared by people in the region. “I was scared to talk. He uses juju, people told me I would die.”

Evangelical preachers draw fanatical followings across the deeply Christian south of Nigeria. Pastor Solomon’s power stems greatly from his beliefs. “He says he’s sent by God. To confront him is like confronting God himself,” a former church worker said. Those who have served under him and lived in the camp say the pastor uses the fear of devil to keep people in line. On the church’s website, in a short biography entitled “I Saw Jesus” translated into six languages including Russian and Chinese - he claimed that he was saved from Satan by God himself.

Foreign evangelical support

Pastor Solomon’s International Christian Centre for Missions has expanded hugely since he founded it in 1990 with just a dozen young female followers. In 1992, he set up the first “Home for the Needy”, taking in poor children whose parents entrusted them to his

care on the promise of an education. A former missionary said the pastor would sometimes misrepresent the children as orphans to raise sponsorship in Europe or the United States.

Ten years later, the church had grown to more than 200 branches, with missionaries and preachers working across southern Nigeria and funds coming from evangelical churches abroad. “He was always browsing the internet to look for church organizations all over the world” to target for donations, the missionary said. “He would send pictures of us or of the children, asking us to look sad. He was saying that white people are so emotional.”

But it was the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency more than 1,000 km to the north of Benin City that caused a surge in the numbers at the camp. As the violence displaced millions of people and grabbed global attention in 2013, Pastor Solomon’s group turned its attention to children in the conflict zone of northeastern Nigeria. “The pastor’s people came (to Maiduguri) and convinced parents to send their children to Benin City where they would have a good education, with free food,” said Rakiya, who allowed five of her six children to go. “At the camp, parents would be given bags of rice, bus fare, jerrycans of palm oil and the like. So when they returned to Maiduguri they would tell other parents ‘Benin is good’,” she said. —AFP