Tuesday 20 / January / 2026
Kaduna: A leader at Nigeria's Christian Association said that 163 worshippers were kidnapped during Sunday services from two churches Kaduna state.
"The attackers came in numbers and blocked the entrance of the churches and forced the worshippers out into the bush," Reverend Joseph Hayab, head of the Christian Association of Nigeria for the country's north, said on Monday.
"The actual number they took was 172 but nine escaped, so 163 are with them," he said.
A politician representing the area at state parliament, Usman Danlami Stingo, on Monday talked of three separate attacks during Sunday church services. He put the number of abducted at 168, according to the Associated Press.
A police spokesperson told Reuters news agency that gunmen with "sophisticated weapons" attacked the two churches, but that police were still trying to confirm the number taken.
The attacks occurred in the village of Kurmin Wali, a largely Christian forest community. It is remote and difficult to reach due to bad roads, the police spokesperson said.
Police said troops and other security agencies had been deployed to the area and that efforts were under way to track the abductors and rescue the captives.
Such attacks are common in central and northern Nigeria, where multiple criminal or "bandit" gangs, as well as religious armed groups, raid remote communities with limited security and government presence.
In November, armed gangs seized more than 300 students and teachers from a Catholic school in Niger state, which borders Kaduna. They were released weeks later in two batches.
Nigeria's abductions are predominantly for ransom, with armed groups using the money to fund other crimes and control villages.
It has grown into a "structured, profit-seeking industry" with profits of about $1.66 million in the year from June 2024 to July 2025, a recent report by Nigeria-based consultancy SBM found.
Kajuru district is a hotspot for bandit attacks in Kaduna State, which has witnessed clashes between Christian farmers and Fulani Muslim cattle herders.
The violence centers around competition for land and dwindling resources, although on the surface it falls along ethnic and religious lines.
Nigeria is roughly split between Muslim (some 56%) and Christians (43%), with Christians primarily living in the south and Muslims in the north.
Experts say both Christians and Muslims are targeted in Nigeria's myriad conflicts, often without distinction, and that claims of a religous war are simplistic.
But US President Donald Trump has latched onto the insecurity in Nigeria, focusing on the killing of Christians.
Nigeria's government has rejected the characterization of the country's escalating security crises as a “Christian genocide."
In December, the United States launched strikes on what it and the Nigerian government said were militants linked to so-called Islamic State in northwestern Sokoto state.
