A 48-year-old prophet, Godwin Ayenuberun, has been arrested by the Ondo State police command for faking the kidnap of two of his church members, and receiving N150,000 as charges for spiritual protection.

The Commissioner for Police, Mr. Gbenga Adeyanju, disclosed this yesterday in Akure while parading the suspect and his acolyte, Ibukun Adetigha, alongside other suspects for various offences.

Adeyanju recounted that the victim, Segun Omosaye from Okitipupa, was previously kidnapped by unknown gunmen on November 30, 2017 but regained his freedom a month after.

He said Omosaye received a text message on September 26, 2018 from his abductors, who admitted carrying out the previous kidnap, informing him they would come back to kidnap him again and kill him.

According to him, the prophet, who is also the founder of Gethsemane Cherubim Church in Igbokoda, the headquarters of Ilaje LGA, had claimed he saw a vision that the victim would be abducted before the incident.

“On receipt of his complaint, detectives swung into action and through intelligence gathering, arrested one Ibukun Adetigha and Prophet Godwin Ayenuberun. The Techno handset that was used in sending text messages was recovered from them. Upon interrogation, the suspects confessed to have sent the text messages but denied their involvement in the earlier abduction of the victim,” he said.

While speaking with The Guardian, Ayenuberun confessed to committing the crime, revealing that: “I am the spiritual father of the victim; I am the one attending to all their spiritual problems. We are all friends, I am the one providing spiritual help for them.

“I did it in a bid to get money from them. This is why I asked my boy to send message to them. I am not a kidnapper, I have never involved in kidnapping business before.”

The suspect revealed further that he had healed the victims’ relatives suffering from all manners of spiritual attacks like leprosy and mental illness. I don’t have money that day; that was why I asked the boy to send the message. I believed that if they saw the message, they would run to me for protection and this would fetch me some money.

“I asked him to bring money so that we could use it to buy some materials for the spiritual solution and other sacrifices; and he brought N150,000. I must not tell a lie,” he said, revealing he gave his acolyte N25,000.

On the fake prophesy, he said “I didn’t not see vision in that regard, I only sent a message to him that he was about to be kidnapped knowing that he would come to me. When he was poisoned, his mother brought him to me for cure; they patronize me for their spiritual solutions.”

Ayenuberun, however, denied being part of the first abduction last year, revealing that he was in Cameroon when the victim was whisked away for a month.

His acolyte, Adetigha, admitted that he sent the text message because “he is my boss, as a prophet, I revere him as my spiritual father in the Lord. He called me one day help him text messages to his two friends; I don’t even know them.”
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