Two Christians Killed, 18 Seized in Kaduna Raid
Gunmen struck Akwando before dawn; hostages include infants and married women from one extended Christian family.
Around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, armed attackers laid siege to Akwando village in Kachia Local Government Area, southern Kaduna State, Nigeria, killing two Christians and abducting about 18 people.
Reuben Buhari, co-founder of the Resilience Aid Dialogue Initiative (RADi), said most of those taken are married women and children from his own family—cousins, their children, and grandchildren. RADi said the hostages number 15 females and three males, including infants aged between four months and one year. Two married men, Irimiya Galadima, 41, and Benjamin Danlami, 31, were named in connection with the assault; available accounts do not clearly state whether they were among the dead or the captives.
A village already scarred
Buhari recalled that Akwando had been hit before. On April 26, 2026, nine schoolchildren were kidnapped on their way to school in Kachia and freed after 36 days. He said the village has suffered other assaults that left several people dead.
He also pointed to April 2026 raids on neighboring communities. Thirty-seven worshippers were taken from Ariko village; seventeen later died in the kidnappers’ camp, and eight women and children returned five months afterward. Of a separate seizure in Awon, he wrote that no males returned alive. From that pattern he concluded that captors deliberately kill male hostages, aiming not only at ransom but at depopulating Christian communities and preparing territorial takeover—an assessment he attributes to the observed outcomes, not to a court finding.
Southern thought leaders have accused the Fulani Ethnic Militia of a deliberate selective mass elimination of male Christians to seize land. That charge remains an allegation. Ado Alipiri, chairman of Kajuru's internally displaced persons, said Fulani armed groups have driven people from more than 110 villages in Kajuru alone as of October 2026, while villages occupied by Hausa Muslims and Fulani in the same local government area were left intact with their farms. Former SOKAPU president Jonathan Asake cited a 2022 survey counting at least 245 displaced villages, more than 500,000 people uprooted, and about 6,000 square kilometers of land taken together with Niger State; he said he holds the list and data.
Nigerian authorities or police provided no public response to the November 4 raid. The attack fits a long pattern of violence against Christian farming communities in southern Kaduna, where night assaults, abductions, and the emptying of villages have repeatedly left families without fathers, livelihoods, or safe return to their land. The Church continues to call for the protection of the faithful, the release of captives, and justice for those killed.