A Kwara State High Court sitting in Ilorin has sentenced Ajiboye Olayinka, the General Overseer of the Mission House of Divine Land of Joy and Prayer Ministry, to life imprisonment for the serial rape of three minors.
In a judgment delivered on Wednesday, Justice Hammed Gegele found Olayinka guilty of multiple charges, including unlawful sexual intercourse with minors, procurement of illegal abortions, and unlawful possession of firearms.
The court heard testimonies of how the cleric leveraged his religious authority to manipulate and sexually violate children placed in his care.
Justice Gegele, while delivering the verdict, described the pastor as a “pedophile and philanderer” who used the cover of the church to commit heinous crimes.
The prosecution established that the convict repeatedly impregnated his victims and subsequently coerced them into terminating the pregnancies. To ensure their silence, Olayinka reportedly forced the minors to swear oaths of secrecy using the Bible, threatening them with death if the abuse was ever revealed.
Justice Gegele noted that the victims were subjected to systematic physical and mental torture.
Recounting the evidence of one survivor, the judge detailed how the cleric would wake the children after church vigils to assault them.
“The convict turned his victims into sex machines, abusing them physically and mentally,” Justice Gegele held. “One of the victims narrated how the defendant took her to a generator house where he forcefully had sexual intercourse with her after applying anointing oil as lubricant.”
The court sentenced Olayinka to three separate life terms for the counts related to the rape of the minors. Additionally, he received a 14-year prison sentence for carrying out illegal abortions.
Justice Gegele further ordered that a pump-action rifle recovered from the convict’s possession be forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
