Church kidnappings plague Nigeria as clerics declare nation a “failed state”

A wave of terror has swept through central Nigeria, marked by a series of brazen kidnappings and killings. The most recent incident occurred on February 6, when gunmen abducted nine teenage worshippers during a night vigil at St. John of the Cross Catholic Church in the Utonkon district.

“We are in pain in our community right now,” resident John Okpali told News Central. “These children were unarmed, they were vulnerable… The families of these children are in pain, the community is in pain and sorrow.”

This was the second church targeted in as many days. Just before dawn on February 5, suspected terrorists had raided the Holy Trinity Parish in the Kafanchan Catholic Diocese, kidnapping the Parish Priest, Father Nathaniel Asuwaye, and ten others.

Bishop Michael Ekwoyi Apochi of the Otukpo Catholic Diocese condemned the February 6 attack as “deeply saddening and unfortunate” and urged prayers for the hostages’ safe release. He noted that such violence is not isolated in the region, recalling that at least seven Christians were abducted from the same locality in December.

“It is something we witness every day,” he said.

Growing climate of insecurity

These attacks underscore a growing climate of insecurity in the West African nation. Just a week prior, close to 200 people were massacred in Kwara state—an incident President Bola Tinubu described as “cowardly and barbaric,” noting the gunmen targeted villagers for rejecting attempts to impose hardline rule. Meanwhile, the abductors of the nine teenagers are reportedly demanding a 30 million naira (about $22,000) ransom.

“It is commendable that community members, even ‌though Muslims, refused to be conscripted into a belief that promotes violence over peace,” the President said in a statement.

The wave of abductions and killings has been so alarming that Nigerian clerics and religious leaders have not held back on voicing their discontent, telling CWR that the groundswell of kidnappings targeting Christians and priests reflects a “failed and failing state” incapable of protecting its citizens.

“The kidnapping of priests is a reflection of the failure of the Nigerian state to protect its citizens,’ said Father Stan Chu Ilo in an exclusive interview with CWR.

The Nigerian Catholic priest from Awgu Diocese and senior research professor at DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology noted that the latest attacks are also” an indication that pastoral agents are being targeted in Nigeria by these [terrorist] groups, either to make a statement [that we are still here, and we can still hurt you ] or to reinforce the narrative that many of us have come to embrace and worry about, that priests, pastoral agents, are targets of deliberate attacks by these radical Islamists,” he told CWR.

“Whether these targets are random or not, priests and pastoral agents and Christians in general are a target in Nigeria,” he added.

Rev. Sister Cecilia Ojetunde, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Ilesa, Osun State of Western Nigeria, echoed similar sentiments, telling CWR that “people are abducted as commodities in exchange for money.”

“Most of these abductors have turned it into a business,” she said.

Attacks on Christians are a broader national issue

A devastating 15-year campaign of violence has claimed 185,000 lives in Nigeria, according to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety.

The report says that of the total killings dating back to 2009, when Boko Haram began its campaign of violence to establish a caliphate across the Sahel, 60,000 were moderate Muslims who refused to abide by the extremist version of Islam the terrorists seek to impose.

The slaughter surged dramatically in 2025, which saw 7,087 Christians murdered and 7,800 more abducted in just over seven months.

According to Emeka Umeagbalasi, the Director of Intersociety, the violence is methodically scourging the physical landscape of faith, leaving 19,100 churches in ashes and 1,100 Christian communities conquered by jihadist forces who allegedly act with complete government impunity.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe,” warned Umeagbalasi, pointing to the 15 million people, mostly Christians, driven from their homes.

The assault has been relentless, extending to the spiritual guides of these communities: 600 clerics have been abducted, while dozens have been silenced, killed, or vanished without a trace.

Kidnapping is now a business

On November 21, 2025, the Editorial Board of Nigerian news organization Business Day wrote an important editorial titled: ‘When crime becomes a business model: Why kidnapping thrives in Nigeria.’

The article notes that Nigeria is “drifting into a dangerous new reality: kidnapping has matured into a national business model. It operates with market logic, defined profit cycles, established supply chains, and predictable revenue streams. What should shock us most is not the brutality itself but how systemically the crime has embedded itself into everyday economic life. Until the government treats kidnapping as an industry, with producers, consumers, financing channels, and enablers, it cannot dismantle it.”

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) from May 2023 to April 2024, approximately 2.2 million individuals were kidnapped. An analysis of this data indicates that 65% of affected households paid a ransom, which averaged N2.7 million ($2,000) per case. This results in an aggregate payment of N2.2 trillion, or approximately $1.5 billion USD, within one year.

This financial burden on citizens surpasses the federal capital budget in numerous years and is considered a conservative estimate due to the under-reporting of incidents. Corroborating this trend, the intelligence firm SBM Intelligence reported that from July 2023 to June 2024, a minimum of 4,722 people were abducted, with at least $1.6 million paid in ransom.

Experts say the business is driven by poverty, but also by jihadists using kidnappings as a way of raising money to fund their operations.

In April 2022, the Nigerian Senate passed a bill outlawing the payment of ransom to kidnappers, but it remained largely ineffectual, because, as Umeagbalasi puts it, “the police rarely arrest kidnappers.”

Sister Cecilia Ojetunde concurs, suggesting state complicity in many of the kidnapping incidents because “many of the soldiers and decision makers are making a lot of gain in cash through these horrible incidents.”

A spike in attacks despite US security involvement

The current wave of attacks is taking place despite increasing US security involvement in Nigeria, including a re-designation of the West African nation as a Country of Particular Concern, carrying out strikes against ISIS targets in Nigeria, and deploying what US authorities call “a small team” of military personnel to help in the fight against terrorism.

While many in Nigeria welcomed US involvement as the start of good things to come, Fr. Ilo dismissed it as an illusion and suggested that the terrorists are sending a clear message: that US involvement doesn’t really matter.

“Nigerians have been sold a lie that because the U.S. is cooperating with Nigerian security organs, those things [security] will improve,” Ilo told CWR.

Umeagbalasi noted that “nothing has changed” concerning what’s happening on the ground despite US military involvement.

Ilo suggested that Nigeria’s route to peace ultimately rests on the shoulders of Nigerians. Noting that the Nigerian state has been “hijacked” by the powerful, Ilo pointed to a fundamental failure of the government to uphold its constitutional contract with its citizens as the major contributing factor to the free fall of the Nigerian state.

He described a scenario wherein a “few individuals who have hijacked the country” maintain power through a sophisticated system of patronage, settlement, and power distribution. He noted that those who benefit from this corrupt system—those “chopping,” as he put it—are complicit in propping up a failing structure with superficial fixes.

“Nigeria needs a surgical analysis, as well as a surgical operation. It’s not simply therapeutic. It needs a surgical intervention,” Fr. Ilo asserted, dismissing surface-level solutions as inadequate to address the depth of the nation’s crises.

The cleric called upon the Catholic Church to become more “prophetic” in its role, drawing on the principles of Catholic social teaching to hold the government accountable. He pointed to a growing willingness within the Nigerian Catholic Secretariat to speak out against injustice as a positive and necessary development.

In fact, following recent atrocities, the Catholic Secretariat in Northern Nigeria strongly condemned what it called the “relentless wave of killings and abductions that continue to plague our nation,” calling it a “massacre allowed by silence”.

“After years of repeated complaints and unfulfilled promises, violence persists unchecked, leaving more communities devastated and citizens weary of empty condolences that do not guarantee their safety,” said the CSN February 7 statement.

Fr. Ilo called for a broad coalition of citizens and civic institutions, including the Church, to begin to demand accountability, otherwise the killings and kidnappings would continue.

“They do it because the environment is enabling them to do it,” he said, referring to perpetrators of crime and injustice.

“This is not going to be the last unless Nigerians and the Church and all men and women of goodwill begin to hold this government accountable for the collapsing social ecosystem of the country.”