Boko Haram Threatens Pastor's Wife and Daughter
Displaced in Adamawa, Pastor Simon Yohanna cannot raise the ransom; five other Christians were freed after their families paid.
Suspected Boko Haram militants have threatened to execute Mercy Yohanna and sell her young daughter, Talita, into slavery unless Pastor Simon Yohanna pays a ransom of 50 million naira—about $33,500. The threat surfaced in late October 2026.
Mercy and Talita were kidnapped on November 9, 2025, while traveling the Buratai–Biu–Bunu Yadi road in Borno State. According to the pastor, his wife was singled out from the vehicle because she is Christian. He later heard her voice briefly on a phone call and received a photograph he believes shows she is still alive.
A family already uprooted by violence
Yohanna cannot raise the money. Driven from his ministry by the insurgency and separated from his congregation, he now lives in Mubi, Adamawa State, caring for three other children. He previously served churches in the Chibok and Bama areas of Borno.
Local sources confirm the abduction. Kidnappers first demanded 50 million naira, then reduced the figure to 12 million naira—still far beyond what the family can pay. The current demand is unclear. Yohanna says the same militants are holding about 70 other Christians, and that five Christians were released on October 19 after their families paid ransoms. Those figures have not been independently verified. He and other families have sought help from Nigerian authorities, including Senator Ali Ndume, without receiving a meaningful response.
A longer war on Christian communities
Boko Haram launched its insurgency in 2009. A separate Islamic State–aligned faction, ISWAP, later emerged. A six-year study by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa found that Islamic Fulani militias have been responsible for four times more civilian deaths than Boko Haram and ISWAP combined, and have abducted far more Christians than those two groups together.
Advocates for the persecuted have called on Nigerian authorities to strengthen security, answer families’ pleas, work for the captives’ release, and investigate the kidnappings. For Catholics and other Christians who know the cost of discipleship in northern Nigeria, Mercy and Talita’s ordeal is not an isolated crime but part of a sustained assault on the Church’s most vulnerable members—wives, children, and pastors who refuse to abandon the faith.