‘I took my 13-year-old daughter to my pastor for counsel after stealing N30,000, he flogged her to death’

A Cross River State pastor, Roman Samson, has been arrested after allegedly flogging a 13-year-old girl to death with a horsewhip over accusations of stealing ₦30,000, with the girl’s mother also detained for bringing her daughter to the clergyman’s home.

The Cross River State Police Command has arrested Pastor Roman Samson, 45, founder of Goodness of Jesus Ministry in the Wula area of Boki Local Government Area, after he allegedly flogged a 13-year-old girl to death with a horsewhip on June 1, 2026. The girl’s mother, Agnes, has also been arrested for taking her daughter to the pastor’s home.

The sequence of events is as heartbreaking as it is chilling.

Agnes, a fish seller and mother of three, took her teenage daughter to Samson’s home after accusing her of repeatedly stealing money — the latest being ₦30,000. She says she left briefly to retrieve the money after her daughter confessed and directed her to a trouser pocket. When she returned, the pastor was rushing the girl to hospital. She was confirmed dead on arrival.

Agnes is categorical: “I didn’t tell him to kill my daughter. I had reported her to the pastor before, and I only wanted him to scold and counsel her. I was not there when he beat my daughter.”

The pastor tells a different story.

“I went for my horsewhip and started beating her. I gave her about 13 to 15 strokes before I noticed she had become very weak,” Samson told journalists. He claims Agnes explicitly asked him to administer the beating. “It was her mother who insisted that I should beat her. She was like a daughter to me,” he said, expressing remorse.

Saturday Tribune reported that both are now in police custody, their conflicting accounts at the centre of a homicide investigation.

Police spokesperson ASP Eitokpah Sunday confirmed the arrests, reaffirming the command’s commitment to justice in the case.

A child confessed, the money was found, and yet she still died. Whatever the full truth turns out to be, one fact remains undeniable — a 13-year-old girl is dead, and the adults responsible for her safety failed her catastrophically.