adminLagos – A Nigerian pastor has been arrested after chaining his nine-year-old son in a room for several weeks with a padlock and denying him food, police said yesterday.
“We acted on a tip-off that a boy had been locked up in a room near a church at Atan in Ogun state. We forced the door open and rescued him,” state police spokesperson Muyiwa Adejobi told AFP.
He said the boy was found chained to the ground with a padlock in a room on Friday.
“He was in a very bad shape, greatly emaciated because of poor feeding. The boy told us his father was not giving him food regularly and that he had been locked up in the room for over one month,” Adejobi said.
“It’s shocking and baffling that a man who claims to be a man of God could be involved in a such a barbaric and inhuman act,” he added.
He said the pastor, 40, told investigators that he locked up his son to perform a ritual intended to stop him stealing.
“The man said his son was always stealing his things and to stop the habit, he needed to chain him with [a] lock so that he wouldn’t run away,” he said. – AFP
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