Recently, Nigerians were naturally horrified upon seeing the emaciated inmates who were released by security operatives following the discovery of rehabilitation centres in Kaduna, Kwara and some other northern cities, where they had been held in torturous confinement.
The revelation that such degree of dehumanisation had been going on under the nose of the authorities and within the communities triggered big shock among the citizenry.
People wondered how such atrocious activities could have been carried on and hidden for so long in open view, to the extend that the concerned state governments were ignorant of the goings on at the centres, which were passed off as Islamic education and awareness centres. The discoveries also raised concerns about whether the practice was in line with Islamic practice, especially as people who run the facilities claimed to be doing so ostensibly to enhance and deepen the Islamic knowledge of the inmates.
However, in stout defence of Islam and strong dismissal of this wrong notion, Chief Imam of Kaduna NUJ Secretariat mosque, Alhaji Mohammed Auwal, unequivocally denounced the practice of sending children and other adults to the so-called rehabilitation centres, and affirmed it was against the tenets of Islam.
Alhaji Auwal said: “God does not tell us to torture anybody in the name of correcting him or her. However, such persons are to be prayed for in the custody of their parents so that God will heal them of whatever illness or mental problems they are going through. We are not taught that someone should torture somebody to get well.”
Recall that the Kaduna Police Command, in September, rescued over 300 people from a house where they were chained and maltreated in the name of rehabilitating them. The raid was conducted after the police got a tipoff about suspicious activities in the so-called Islamic school.
When the news broke, it drew strong condemnation from many people, who described it as a classic example of man’s inhumanity to man.
The house located in Rigasa area of Kaduna, where the police rescued the inmates wore the façade of an Islamic school and rehabilitation camp, which was operated by seven men, led by 39-year-old Ismaila Abubakar.
The Kaduna State police spokesperson, Yakubu Sabo, who spoke to newsmen on the discovery said that children as young as 10 and teenage young men were chained by the ankle. The victims were reportedly taken from different areas in Kaduna following complaints of drug addiction and related offences alleged against them.
Few weeks after the first discovery of the torture house, another centre in the same Rigasa community known as Nigga Rehabilitation and Skill Acquisition Centre, was found to be a decoy for what it was really doing. The Commissioner for Human Services and Social Development, Hajiya Hafsat Baba disclosed that some of the victims of torture were found to have been in chains for eight years.
While the dust raised by the discovery was still swirling, the Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, accompanied by security operatives, visited the centre to evacuate 147 inmates and then shut down the facility.
As Sunday Sun learnt from Hajiya Baba, the ministry was in the process of profiling them to ascertain their true identity.
Her words: “Some of their families have come for them. We are trying to segregate them according to their states because majority of them are not from Kaduna State. There are four foreigners among them – two from Cameroon and two from Niger Republic.
“We have been in and out of hospitals. We have conducted HIV test for all of them. We have found those that tested positive and linked them up with clinics. Those that were sexually assaulted have made statements to the police.
“All in all, they are doing fine, but we have some with mental issues and we have taken them to the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Barnawa, Kaduna, for proper management while the sick ones were taken to Barrau Dikko Specialist Hospital. None of them is in admission for now.
“Of course, they have been under torture. They were all in chains. We had to engage the services of welders, cut the chains on their legs. Some of them had been in chains for eight years.”
On why it took the state government this long before taking action after several media reports, she said: “People have been talking about the centre and they started asking questions after the first one that the police raided a few weeks after. So, the governor just paid unscheduled visit to the place and shut it down.”
As Nigerians were still trying to absorb the shocking discovery, another illegal rehabilitation centre was discovered in Zaria, from where the police rescued 11 persons, some chained on the legs and hands.
