A faith-based organisation, Omega Power Ministries (OPM), Port Harcourt, on Sunday said it had rehabilitated more than 2,000 youths so far from social vices like kidnapping, drug abuse and armed robbers among others.
The General Overseer and Founder, OPM, Apostle Chibuzor Chinyere, made this disclosure while fielding questions at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) flagship programme, Forum, in Abuja.
According to Chinyere, everything the ministry does is scriptural and according to Matthew 25:34 where Jesus stressed the importance and benefits of helping the needy.
“This is 12 years of Omega Power Ministry and we have gone all out to reach the unreached and save the unsaved;
“The problem is not the people that come to church because the people that come to church have a mindset that they are coming to see God.
“What of those that don’t come to church, those unreached, those people maybe they are into prostitution and they go and see a man on Saturday normally if they stay with a man on Saturday and on Sunday morning, they are supposed to be at home sleeping.
“So, there is no way they can come to church, it is going to those people and taking the gospel to them and that is the way you can get the unsaved people by the grace of God that we are doing.
“That is what we are doing – getting the sex workers, getting the armed robbers; we have more than 2,000 of this boys, armed robbers, kidnappers, killers, people that have done terrible things, we have a place where we keep these people.
“ Number one, preaching is in two ways, you can come to somebody preach to the person and the person will feel sober, as soon as you leave that person the environment will choke out the word of God.
“So, if you preach to that person you have to relocate that person from that environment and give the person another source of income,” he said.
Chinyere said that before going to preach to people, they ensured that there were some available resources like estates, well-furnished houses to accommodate repentant people thereby pulling them out of their dangerous zone.
He said that the church would then move to rehabilitate them, change their mind set, orientation and give them another source of income by empowering them.
The cleric said that the church has a vocational centre where it trains people on various skills acquisition like carpentry, scaffolding, electric and electronics, pipeline welding, among others.
Chinyere said that likewise, the church had opened salons, boutiques, restaurants, among others for the repentant girls, who were also into vices such as prostitution, adding that they were now settled and doing excellently well.
He advised the government and religious bodies to step up and help the less privileged in the society to curb social vices and also give them a good life.
The general overseer urged churches to focus more on salvation messages, adding that the Bible admonished that people should seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and every other things shall be added onto them.
Chinyere urged ministers of the gospel to focus more on the rapture and salvation messages to reduce crimes in the society.(NAN)
