Busted! How Prophetess Turned Church Premises Into Underage Prostitution Haven In Ogun

The Ogun State police command has arrested a 54-year-old female pastor known as Idowu Olupinla for allegedly operating a prostitution cartel with teenagers aged between 14 to 19, right inside her church premises.

Premium Times reports that the woman, who is the founder of one Cherubim and Seraphim Church, Ijoko–Ota, Ogun State, was paraded alongside some of her victims at Eleweran Police Headquarters, Abeokuta.

According to investigations by the police, the suspect harbors the young girls in the church premises on number 52, Okesina Street and arranges for men to have sex with them for a fee.

While she was being paraded at the state police command in Abeokuta yesterday, September 4th, the state Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Ilyasu, said the young teenagers who were found in the church premises have been taken to a hospital for medical examination.

One of the rescued victims said many of the girls were from broken homes and sought a place to stay before they were lured into prostitution by the supposed pastor.

According to Nigerian Tribune, here are the narrations some of the victims gave about their ordeal:

Zainab, 19, said:

”I followed a friend to the church because she was a member. At that time, a spiritualist who had been in trance was about to deliver visions and messages from God. After the programme, I went back home where I was staying with my friend.

”The following day, Madam Olupinla called my friend, asking to see me. When I got there, she said I should start living with her, asking whether I did not want all the good things my friends had. Since my mother was dead and I left my father a long time ago, I packed my things from my friend’s house and decided to stay with her.

”She started bringing men to sleep with me in the night, and after they must have finished, they would pay N500. The woman would collect N300 out of it and leave N200 for me. Same applied to other girls staying with her.  Each of us used to have between two and three men per day. I have spent about 18 months with her.

”I was there before some other girls came. I also met about nine girls there. Some of the men used to put on condoms when having sex with us but some other didn’t. Anytime we got pregnant, the woman would give us drugs to abort it.”

Saidat, 16, said:

”One day, I was in my sister’s shop helping her to sell fish when Madam Olupinla’s daughter came to tell me that a spiritualist in their church was descending from the spiritual realm. I followed her as a friend and that was how I started living with her mother. She started making me to sleep with men and it was there I lost my virginity.

”In between the time I stayed there, whenever I came to my senses, I would return home. But she would call me on the phone and I would return there. Before my father’s death, he came to arrest the woman for keeping me in her house.”

Halima, also 16, revealed, “I followed my friend, Saidat, to the woman’s church and that was how I lost my virginity after I was asked to sleep with men.”

At first, the suspect, Madam Olupinla, who said she could not tell her age, denied ever keeping any of the girls, claiming that she did not know them.

”Police came three times and did not see anyone in my church except me and my daughter. It was a woman who said she was looking for her daughter that went under the bridge at Sango area, Ogun State, to pick some girls who she claimed I was using as prostitutes. I don’t know the whereabouts of the woman’s daughter.

”She has never stayed with me. And I don’t know any of the girls; neither have I ever aborted for any of them,” she initially stated.

Afterwards, she later confessed she only knew one of them, Saidat and claimed that it was her ‘husband’ called Aroja who brought her to her church when a member who went into trance recovered to deliver spiritual messages.

“She only spent about a week and left with her husband,” Madam Olupinla stated.

Speaking on how the police got to know about the cartel, one of the girls, Zainab, said that problem started when a mother came looking for her daughter and Madam Olupinla denied ever seeing the girl.

“We used to see the girl living with Olupinla and when we were asked, we told the truth,” she said, adding that she was surprised to see the elderly woman denying ever having them under her roof.

According to the state’s commissioner, the suspect will soon be charged to court for human trafficking and child abuse.

Photo credit: Premium Times