Photo: Woman Arrested For Stealing Girl At RCCG’s Redemption Camp

Ogun State Police Command has arrested a 28-year-old woman, Anuoluwapo Joshua,  for allegedly stealing a three-year-old girl, Patience, at the Redemption Camp along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

The Redemption Camp is owned by the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

It was gathered that the suspect allegedly stole the child in July 2017 during the monthly Holy Ghost Congress. She was apprehended on December 29 at a youth centre in the camp.

Patience was discovered missing in July after her mother returned from the new auditorium where she had gone to pack her children’s clothes.


The state Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said since then, efforts to know the whereabouts of the child had proved abortive.

Oyeyemi said, “Luck ran against the suspect on December 29 when the child was sighted inside the Youth centre at the Redemption Camp during the children’s end of the year party, organised by the RCCG.

“The Divisional Police Officer, Redemption Camp Division, Olaiya Martins, led detectives to the centre where they waited until the end of the programme. As soon as the suspect came out to pick the child, she was promptly arrested.”

Oyeyemi said the suspect had confessed to the crime.

He said, “She admitted that she lured the child out of her parents’ sight and took her to Ofada, where she has been taking care of the child since then.

“Investigation further revealed that the suspect had earlier got pregnant for somebody in Lagos, but travelled to the North where she claimed she had been delivered of a baby girl.

“But when she returned from the North, she did not return with the baby. This made the man who impregnated her to put pressure on her to bring his child.

“She informed her relatives that she was travelling to Nasarawa State to bring the child, but went to the Redemption Camp where she stayed for some days before stealing the child which she presented to her relations as her daughter.”

Oyeyemi said the state Commissioner of Police,  Ahmed Iliyasu, had ordered the transfer of the suspect to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Abeokuta.