By Ngala Killian Chimton, OSV News
After reports spread that dozens of Christians in Nigeria had allegedly fallen victim to kidnappers again in another sign of persecution against Christ's followers in Africa's most populous nation, some police said the kidnapping did not occur.
However, on the evening of January 20, Nigerian police confirmed that a group of worshippers were abducted from three churches in a remote area of the northern state of Kaduna, according to a January 21 BBC report.
The information chaos adds to the growing insecurity of Christian communities who fear bandits - from Boko Haram to the Islamic State group to Fulani herdsmen - who mostly go unpunished, Christian advocates say.
According to the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Northern Region, at least 160 Christians were allegedly forcibly taken away during church services on the morning of January 18.
Rev. John Hayab said that «the attackers came in large numbers and blocked the entrance to the churches and forced the worshippers out into the forest.».
«The actual number taken was 172, but nine escaped, so 163 are with them,» he said.
According to Reuters, a police spokesman said on January 19 that the attackers arrived «with sophisticated weapons» and attacked two churches in Kurmin Wali.
Contrary versions
Police said the area is a forest community that is difficult to access due to the poor condition of the roads, but explained that police have been deployed in the area to try to locate the perpetrators and rescue the victims.
But another unit, the Kaduna state police, initially contradicted that statement. The police commissioner, Muhammad Rabiu, called reports of a mass abduction of Christians false, saying police were unable to identify any of the people allegedly abducted.
Dauda Madaki, chairman of the Kajuru local government, also dismissed the reports as false, calling them «no evidence of the attack. I asked the village headman, Mai Dan Zaria, and he said there was no such attack,» Madaki told the BBC.
The Kaduna police commissioner also challenged «anyone to list the names of the kidnapped victims and other details.».
Final clarifications
But more than two days after the attack on the village of Kurmin Wali, police finally said that an earlier statement denying the attack had been «widely misinterpreted,» and local residents confirmed to the BBC that the number of abductees was 177 and 11 managed to escape.
Afiniki Moses, whose relatives were allegedly abducted, confirmed to Reuters that the armed gang abducted more than 170 people during a religious service in two churches, including her husband and two children.
«They kidnapped many people from the community, and my husband was among them. As you can see, I don't feel good,» she told Reuters.
Complaints against the government
«Everyone is complicit,» said Emeka Umeagbalasi, director of the Catholic-inspired non-governmental agency Intersociety, accusing the Nigerian government of varying levels of complicity in the attacks against Christians.
«The Nigerian government strongly supports what is happening with Christians in the country. It's a great project, and we have repeated it over and over again,» he told OSV News.
«Christians are kidnapped every day and killed every day in this country,» Umeagbalasi said.
Latest incidents
The pattern of terrorism against Christian communities is long and dramatic. In November, the world watched closely as more than 300 schoolchildren and their teachers were abducted from St. Mary's Catholic school in Papiri.
Immediately after the kidnapping, at least 50 children escaped from their captors. On December 14, the captors released a group of 100, including 14 high school students, one staff member, 80 primary school pupils and five kindergarten children. The remaining captives were released on December 21.
The United States carried out a deadly attack in northwestern Nigeria on Dec. 25. President Donald Trump declared that the attack targeted terrorists from the Islamic State group who were persecuting Christians in that nation, prompting mixed reactions from Nigerian Church leaders.
«Nothing has changed since the U.S. bombed those Islamic State targets,» Umeagbalasi told OSV News.
The kidnapping business
Kidnapping in Nigeria has become a highly organized criminal industry that generates huge sums of money, according to a report by security consultancy SBM Intelligence.
In the report «Economics of the Kidnapping Industry in Nigeria,» the organization stated that between July 2023 and June 2024, at least 7,568 people were kidnapped in more than 1,130 incidents.
The advocacy group Intersociety said that since 2009, when Boko Haram began its murderous campaign to establish a caliphate across the Sahel, at least 185,000 Nigerian civilians have been killed, including 125,000 Christians and 60,000 moderate Muslims.
However, the figures given in the Intersociety reports were questioned by the BBC's fact-checking department, saying that the methodology of the reports is unclear and that repeated numbers sometimes appear in them.
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