The Kaduna state police command has rescued over 300 chained children and adults in Rigasa community, Igabi local government area of the state.
Some of the rescued victims were from Burkina Faso, Mali and other African countries.
With chains on their legs and scars of injuries from torture, they disclosed that the Thursday evening’s raid of the place was liberation from slavery.
Bello Hamza, a 42- year- old inmates said he was tricked to the centre by his family members who were interested in taking over his share of their inheritance.
“I have spent three months here with chains on my legs. I’m supposed to be pursuing my Master Degree in University of Pretoria, South Africa. I got admission to study Applied Mathematics, but here am I in chains. They claimed to be teaching us Quran and Islam, but they do a lot of things here. They subject the younger ones to homosexuality.
“This is supposed to be an Islamic centre, but trying to run away from here attracts severe punishment; they tie people and hang them to the ceiling for that, but engaging in homosexuality attracts no punishment.
“Within my short stay here, somebody had died as a result of torture. Others have died before my coming due to poor health and torture. They give us very poor food and we only eat twice a day; 11:00am and 10:00pm.
“They have denied me a lot of things here. I am a family man, I have responsibilities, but I am chained here not knowing what is happening to my family members.”
Kaduna state police commissioner, Ali Aji Janga, who led the raid, said: “We received information that something was going on in this rehabilitation centre or Islamic centre. So, I sent my DPO here to check what was going on.
“On getting here, we discovered that this is neither a rehabilitation centre nor Islamic school.
“You can see it yourself the small children, some of whom are brought from neighbouring African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and others and from across Nigeria.
“Most of them are even chained. These people are being used, dehumanized; you can see it yourself. The man who is operating this home claimed that parents brought their children here for rehabilitation.
“But from the look of things this is not a rehabilitation centre. No reasonable parent will bring his children to this place. So, we are going to investigate them and get to the root of the matter.
“We would find out the real motive behind this centre, and if they are found wanting they would be charged to court. But first, we are evacuating all the people from this place to our station and make announcement for parents to come and recover their children,” he said.
Meanwhile, the proprietor of the centre simply identified as Malam denied the allegation of dehumanising his students.
“All those allegations of torture, dehumanisation and homosexuality are false and mere allegations. We do nothing here other than teaching people Islam’’, he said.
