Olore ‘torture centre’ not approved by govt as correctional centre ― Oyo Commissioner

Oyo Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Inclusion, Mrs Faosat Sanni has described as erroneous those notions that the Olore “torture centre” Ibadan, was a correctional or rehabilitation centre, noting that the centre was unapproved by the state government for such purpose.

According to Sanni, it was inconceivable that the Olore centre where children were locked up, tortured, barricaded and underfed would be classified as a correctional centre.

Speaking with journalists in her office, on Wednesday, Sanni, however, said the state government was poised to open up more correctional centres because the existing state-owned centres were filled up.

Owing to inadequate space to accommodate the over 200 inmates of the Olore centre, she said the state government was fast-tracking its profiling of the rescued inmates at the Sanyo temporary camp for them to be reunited with their parents and relatives from Thursday.

She added the relevant state government agencies and security agencies were carrying out diligent profiling of the inmates to ensure that they are handed over to the right individuals and that they don’t return to similar centres across the country.

Before releasing the children, Sanni added that the parents will be made to sign an understanding not to take their children or wards to such centres anymore.

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“People erroneously refer to that Olore centre as a correctional or rehabilitation centre. A correctional centre cannot be a place where children are locked up, barricaded, never allowed to see sunlight and are underfed. That place is short of a correctional centre. Olore centre is unapproved by the government as a correctional site.

“Presently, the correctional centres owned by the state are filled up and with the number of children evacuated from Olore centre and we may not be able to accommodate all of them.

“However, this scenario will give us the opportunity to open up more centres to cater for these people but these individuals or their parents never approached the government to say that they had children giving them problems.

“From our profiling, most of them are problem children; these are children that are high on drugs, some dropped out of school and others decided to run away from their homes.

“The government has no intention of separating the parents from their children. We want to reunite them, at the same time, we do not want the children to be returned to a similar centre because we don’t know the number of such centres we have in Nigeria.

“That is why we are still in the process of profiling the children and making sure that those of them who have parents and whose parents can easily identify them, we will be able to release them to their parents.

“And those others whose parents are yet to come up, we are going to do something about them. We need to carry out a thorough investigation to make an informed decision.

“After the documentation, which we hope to conclude today, the children will be reunited with their parents from tomorrow (Thursday).

“We will make sure their parents sign undertaking that they will not take their children back to such centres. We are trying to fast track the process so that we complete it between today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday).

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“Many of the parents do not know the kind of maltreatment that the children were going through. When we spoke with them, some parents agreed that they took the children there but that they didn’t know the kind of place they took them to; they just went to dump their children because they deem them troublesome. In fact, some of them were paying for this.

“When these parents visit, their children are brought out for them to have a short interaction under the tree. They even dispossess them of their phones. The children tell us that their parents pay but that money is not well utilized by the owner of the place to take care of them,” Sanni said.

Since Monday that the inmates were rescued, Sanni said the state government spent hundreds of thousands daily to provide three meals, while it also catered for 24 inmates who are hospitalized at the Adeoyo State Hospital, Ring Road, Ibadan.

“Ambulances are there currently because some of them are in a pathetic situation. Twenty-four of them were taken to Adeoyo hospital, Ring road, and are being taken care of by the state government. We feed them 3 times a day. They are well taken care of than where they were before.

“The government didn’t just go to that centre on its own. We heard that it was when that centre collapsed, the children from that centre alerted the police and they told the police that there was another centre at Olore where children were being maltreated,” Sanni added.