Fulani Militias Kidnap Seven Christians in Benue
Ransom demands near $23,000; a widow’s body left by the road as dry-season violence returns to a Christian farming belt.
On Friday evening, October 30, 2026, heavily armed men intercepted a Toyota Sharon near Adoka on the Otukpo-Ohimini-Adoka Federal Highway in Benue State, central Nigeria. About 17 attackers seized six Christian mourners traveling with the body of a woman whose husband was among those taken. The corpse, being conveyed from Kano to Okpoga for burial, was left beside the road.
Ogwuche John, brother of the captive husband, said the kidnappers struck around 8 p.m. and spoke Hausa, Fulfulde, and some English. He reported a ransom demand of 15 million naira—about $10,000—and stressed a painful cultural bind: “In our culture, we cannot bury his wife in his absence while he is still alive.”
About an hour later, around 9:03 p.m., five armed men blocked the same highway roughly a mile away and abducted a lone traveler, Daddy Samson, returning to Otukpo from a burial. His father, Samson Adejo, a senior official from Apa Local Government Area, said callers on Saturday demanded 20 million naira—about $13,000—and asked, “Where do we go from here?” Combined, the families face ransom demands totaling about $23,000.
Search continues as dry season returns
As of Tuesday, November 3, Otukpo Local Government Chairman Maxwell Ogiri said the seven victims remained in captivity: “No, the kidnapped victims have not been rescued, but we are getting closer to the location of the abductors.” Benue State Police spokesman DSP Peter Aondongu confirmed both incidents and said officers had been deployed on a search-and-rescue mission.
Human rights activist Meddy Olotu said the abandoned corpse stayed on the road overnight before Federal Road Safety Corps personnel moved it to Adoka and then to a hospital morgue. Adoka is a predominantly Christian agrarian community about 45 miles southwest of Makurdi. Residents describe the end of a roughly three-month lull in violence as the dry season returns. Resident Ejiga Abraham linked the earlier calm to the displacement of armed groups and high water levels on the River Benue, and alleged that some victims are held at a forest detention site known locally as Amla camp. Pablo Agada Williams, Benue South Zonal Commander of the Civil Protection Guards, warned that violent attacks “will continue to intensify as the dry season has arrived.”
The abductions follow the October 13 kidnapping of Rev. Fr. John Inalegwu Otache, parish priest of St. Margaret’s Catholic Parish in Ajegbe-Awume, Ohimini Local Government Area. Families and witnesses have identified the attackers as Fulani ethnic militiamen; police statements have confirmed the kidnappings without publicly detailing ethnicity. An Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa report has linked armed Fulani militias to nearly 24,000 civilian deaths over a four-year period across the region—a grim backdrop for Christian communities already strained by repeated raids, ransom economies, and the desecration of the dead.
For the Church in Nigeria, each such seizure is not only a security crisis but an assault on the dignity of the living and the deceased. The faithful continue to pray for the safe return of the captives and for protection of rural Christian populations who farm, bury their dead, and worship under constant threat.