Nigeria’s Security Paradox: When Rescues Make Headlines but Abductions Never Stop
In Kurmin Wali, a farming settlement on the outskirts of Kaduna State’s Kajuru area, Sunday mornings once followed a predictable rhythm. Church bells rang. Families gathered. Children drifted between pews while adults bowed their heads in prayer. On 18 January 2026, that routine ended abruptly.
Armed men stormed three churches mid-service—two belonging to the Cherubim and Seraphim Movement and one Evangelical Church Winning All congregation. Worshippers were forced out at gunpoint and marched into the surrounding bush. By the time the dust settled, local accounts suggested roughly 177 people had been taken. Some managed to flee during the chaos. Around 166 did not.
What remained were empty benches, overturned chairs, and a silence that felt heavier than grief. Families waited without answers, scanning phones for updates that never came.
Three days later, Nigeria’s military announced the rescue of 62 kidnapped civilians during operations in Zamfara and Kebbi states, hundreds of kilometres away. Two militants were killed. The freed captives—men, women, and children—were declared safe and awaiting reunification with their families. It was presented as progress in the fight against banditry.
Yet for communities like Kurmin Wali, the announcement landed with mixed emotions. Relief for strangers, yes—but also a familiar dread. Because in Nigeria’s northwest, rescues often coexist with new abductions. For every group pulled from the forest, another seems to disappear into it.
This is the paradox shaping life across large parts of northern Nigeria.
Banditry in the region did not begin as mass kidnapping. In the late 2010s, it emerged from cattle rustling disputes and competition over land. Over time, it hardened into a lucrative criminal economy. Ransom became a business model. Villages, schools, highways—and now churches—became targets.
Kaduna has seen this before. School abductions, village raids, roadside kidnappings. But what made the Kurmin Wali attack especially unsettling was not only the scale—it was the response. Or rather, the absence of one.
In the days following the attack, senior security officials publicly denied that any church abductions had taken place. Reports were dismissed as exaggerations, even fabrications. Those spreading the information were accused of inflaming tensions. It was only after victim lists circulated, church leaders spoke out, and international organisations raised alarm that authorities reversed course and confirmed the kidnappings.
For families living the crisis in real time, the delay felt like abandonment.
Church leaders described the scene plainly: people gathered for worship, surrounded without warning, driven into the forest “like livestock.” Survivors who escaped spoke of terror and confusion, of prayers interrupted by gunfire. Ransom demands soon followed. Reports suggested kidnappers were asking for millions of naira as an initial payment.
Beyond the immediate trauma, insecurity has begun to hollow out daily life in Kajuru and similar areas. Farmers avoid distant fields, reducing harvests and pushing food prices upward far beyond the region. Parents withdraw children from school, deciding that safety—however fragile—matters more than education. Entire families relocate to urban centres, swelling informal settlements and stretching already thin services.
One resident described a village where nearly a quarter of the population has fled since the attack. Homes stand locked. Markets have thinned. Social bonds—once the backbone of rural resilience—are fraying.
The economic consequences ripple outward. Small traders close shop. Transport routes become unsafe. Families abroad divert remittances from investment or education toward ransom payments. In a country where poverty already touches nearly half the population, kidnapping intensifies inequality. Those with means negotiate faster releases. Those without wait longer—or disappear entirely.
Security forces have not been idle. There have been raids, arrests, and occasional breakthroughs. Earlier in January, six kidnapped villagers were freed in Kajuru itself. Days before the church attack, two abducted pastors were rescued in Niger State. These operations matter. Lives are saved.
But they have not changed the underlying pattern.
Analysts point to familiar problems: overstretched security forces covering vast rural terrain; poor intelligence coordination; corruption that weakens trust; porous borders that allow weapons to circulate freely. Bandit groups exploit ungoverned spaces and unresolved grievances, embedding themselves in environments where the state’s presence is episodic at best.
Military action disrupts, but rarely dismantles. Without credible prosecutions, economic alternatives for at-risk youth, and genuine partnerships with local communities, violence regenerates.
Political reactions have followed a predictable script—statements of outrage, calls for unity, promises of decisive action. Kaduna’s governor visited Kajuru days after the attack, assuring residents that the abducted would return home. Similar assurances have been given before. They have not always been fulfilled.
What lingers most powerfully is not the gunfire, but the erosion of trust. Trust in institutions. Trust in information. Trust that the state sees rural communities as more than afterthoughts.
For the families of Kurmin Wali, the crisis is not theoretical. It is measured in nights without sleep, phones kept charged in case a call comes, fields left untended, children kept close. The question they ask is simple and devastating: why does safety feel so temporary?
Until Nigeria confronts insecurity as a social, economic, and governance challenge—not just a military one—the cycle will continue. Rescues will bring momentary relief. New attacks will follow. And communities like Kurmin Wali will keep learning, again and again, what it means to live between hope and fear.
