Armed gunmen stormed three churches in Kaduna State on Sunday morning in what has become known as the Kaduna church abduction, seizing more than 150 worshippers during church services in an incident security analysts describe as one of the most audacious mass kidnappings in recent Nigerian history.
The coordinated attacks occurred in Kurmin Wali, a community in Kajuru Local Government Area, where families were left devastated and a number of villages gripped by fear. The assailants struck almost simultaneously, suggesting prior reconnaissance and a level of coordination that local residents say has become disturbingly familiar.
According to eyewitness accounts, the gunmen, armed with automatic rifles, arrived around 11:25 a.m. as worshippers gathered at the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), a Cherubim and Seraphim church, and a Catholic church. Survivors described scenes of panic as congregants were rounded up, beaten, and forced to march toward known bandit routes leading into the Rijana forest, a long-established hideout for armed groups operating along the Kaduna-Abuja axis.
A member of the Kaduna State House of Assembly, Usman Danlami Stingo, confirmed that 177 people were initially unaccounted for, with only 11 managing to return hours later, reportedly after escaping under cover of bush paths. The Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Kaduna State, Rev. John Joseph Hayab, corroborated the scale of the abduction, stating that while nine worshippers escaped, more than 160 remain in captivity.
As of Monday evening, no official rescue operation had yielded results, and no ransom demand had been publicly disclosed, deepening anxiety among families who fear the abductees have been dispersed across multiple forest camps.
A Familiar Pattern of Violence
The Kurmin Wali attack is only the latest in a wave of relentless insecurity engulfing Kaduna State and Nigeria’s wider northwest. Over the past five years, local communities in Kajuru, Chikun, Birnin Gwari, and parts of southern Kaduna have endured repeated mass kidnappings, village raids, and targeted assaults on religious gatherings.
Residents say the attackers operate with near-total impunity. They blame poor conditions of access roads in the area, thinly spread security forces, and vast forest corridors that allow the assailants to strike and vanish within hours. Despite repeated assurances from Abuja, many rural communities remain effectively unprotected.
Security Failure and National Priorities
What has intensified public outrage over the Kurmin Wali abductions is not only their scale, but the broader question of government priorities.
While communities like Kurmin Wali plead for patrol bases, intelligence-led operations, and rapid-response units, Nigeria’s federal government recently approved 9 million dollars for foreign lobbyists aimed at improving the country’s international image. For many Nigerians, the contrast is stark and painful.
That sum, critics argue, could have funded surveillance drones, strengthened local police formations, supported victims of displacement, or bolstered intelligence gathering in known bandit corridors like Rijana. Instead, the government appears to have prioritised perception management abroad over protection at home.
No international public relations campaign can console parents whose children were dragged from church pews. No foreign lobbying firm can substitute for the security presence that should have been in place on a Sunday morning in Kajuru.
Chilling Message to Citizens
The contrast highlighted by this imbalance has drawn increasing attention to questions about national priorities and public safety.
While officials focus on engaging foreign partners and investors, incidents affecting communities continue to be reported across several parts of the country. Places of worship, once regarded as sanctuaries, have increasingly become soft targets.
For the people of Kurmin Wali, the questions are no longer rhetorical.
Where are the security forces tasked with protecting them?
Questions continue to be raised about oversight mechanisms and the speed of response when large numbers of people go missing during public gatherings.
As more than 150 people remain missing, likely held in forest camps by their captors, their families wait in anguish, clinging to faith while confronting the bitter reality that help may not come swiftly.
Until Nigeria’s leadership demonstrates that citizen security outweighs image management, attacks like Sunday’s will continue. And more communities across Kaduna, and the wider northwest, will be forced to confront a grim truth. They are largely on their own.
