Ekiti Celebrates Return of Abducted Church Worshippers
Relief has finally settled over Eda Oniyo, a quiet farming community on the border between Ekiti and Kwara states, where fifteen worshippers snatched from a church more than two months ago are now recovering in hospital beds in Ado Ekiti. Ekiti State Governor Biodun Oyebanji walked through the emergency and children’s wards of the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital on Sunday to see them for himself, a visit that closed one of the most harrowing security episodes the state has faced in recent years.
The victims, made up mostly of women and children, regained their freedom in the early hours of Saturday after roughly 66 days in captivity. They had been seized on April 28 when gunmen stormed a programme at a Christ Apostolic Church in Eda Oniyo, in the Ilejemeje Local Government Area. During that attack, the assailants shot a pastor dead and marched 16 worshippers into the surrounding forest. One of the captives, a woman, died before the others could be released, leaving 15 survivors.
Speaking at the hospital, Oyebanji said he was encouraged by the condition of those receiving treatment. “I am happy that they are back. I am happy that the little child who was unconscious yesterday (Saturday) is now conscious. All of them are stable, and they are responding to medical treatment. I commend the staff of EKSUTH for a job well done,” the governor said.
He confirmed that the state would cover the full cost of their care and support their return to normal life. “Since yesterday (Saturday), we brought them here to take care of them and ensure that they are medically sound. I have instructed that the state will bear the cost of their treatment and everything that happens between now and when they are discharged. I will also engage psychologists to counsel them with a view to reintegrating them with their family members,” he said.
The governor thanked God for the release, appreciated President Bola Tinubu for his support, and commended security agencies, including members of the Hunters’ Association. He also singled out community groups for praise. “I must particularly place on record my commendation for the efforts of members of the Eda Oniyo Progressives Association, the Christian Association of Nigeria and other well-meaning indigenes of Ekiti State who supported us in ensuring that the kidnap victims were finally released,” he said.
Oyebanji used the occasion to caution against turning the tragedy into a political weapon. “We should be our brothers’ keepers. The safety of every Ekiti indigene should be our concern, and there should be a limit to politics,” he said. He added, “I will advise our people that when things like this happen, they should not weaponise them or play politics with them. It was so shocking that some people decided to play politics with this unfortunate incident.”
The governor had, a day earlier, directed EKSUTH management to provide comprehensive medical screening and treatment for the survivors. In a statement issued in Ado Ekiti on Saturday by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Media, Yinka Oyebode, the state government said it had instructed the Ministry of Health and Human Services to oversee the victims’ welfare, with all medical expenses to be borne by the state. According to Oyebode, the freed worshippers “will remain under medical supervision until they are certified fit for reintegration with their families.”
How exactly the captives regained their freedom remains a point of some divergence. The Ekiti State Police Command has insisted the release was the product of a coordinated operation. In a statement on Saturday, the command’s spokesman, SP Sunday Abutu, said the outcome “followed sustained intelligence-led operations and coordinated efforts by the Nigeria Police Force, the Military, other security agencies, the Amotekun Corps, local hunters, and the Ekiti State Government.” He said efforts had been intensified to arrest the perpetrators, and the state Commissioner of Police, Michael Falade, commended the synergy shown by the various security stakeholders.
Community voices have offered a different version. A representative of the affected community and former state commissioner, Rufus Ajayi, was widely reported as saying that residents raised N25.5m, along with quantities of petrol, rice and other food items, to secure the release. Ajayi was quoted as backing the state government’s decision not to intervene in any ransom arrangement, arguing that direct involvement could turn the state into a target for further attacks. The two accounts, official rescue and community-funded release, have not been reconciled, and the contradiction reflects a recurring difficulty in verifying the circumstances behind many Nigerian abductions.
The Eda Oniyo attack sits within a broader pattern of mass abductions that has strained communities across the country. According to the geopolitical research firm SBM Intelligence, in its report titled “Locust Business: The Economics of Nigeria’s Kidnap Industry,” at least 4,722 people were abducted in about 997 incidents between July 2024 and June 2025, during which some 762 people were killed. The firm reported that kidnappers demanded roughly N48bn in ransom over that period, of which about N2.57bn was confirmed paid. While the North West remains the epicentre of the crime, the South West recorded 144 kidnap victims within the review window, an indication that the menace has spread well beyond its traditional strongholds.
Religious gatherings have increasingly become soft targets. The pattern echoes an incident in neighbouring Kwara State, where armed men attacked worshippers in the Ejiba community, killing three people and abducting 28 others before security operatives secured their release. Nationally, the closing weeks of 2025 were dominated by a wave of school abductions, including the seizure of pupils and staff at St Mary’s schools in Papiri, Niger State, and the abduction of schoolgirls in Kebbi State, cases that drew comparisons with the 2014 kidnapping of the Chibok girls.
Analysts have repeatedly linked the persistence of the crime to the country’s economic pressures. SBM Intelligence and other observers have noted that the sharp devaluation of the naira and stubbornly high inflation, which stood at 15.93 per cent in May 2026 according to the National Bureau of Statistics, have inflated ransom demands in local currency terms even as their dollar value has stagnated. It is worth recalling that the National Assembly outlawed ransom payments in 2022, prescribing severe penalties for kidnapping, while President Tinubu has publicly maintained a no ransom stance. In practice, however, families and communities faced with the prospect of losing loved ones have often found that policy difficult to observe.
For the survivors now recovering in Ado Ekiti, those larger debates are, for the moment, secondary. Their immediate task is recovery, and the state has committed to seeing them through it. Whether the men behind the Eda Oniyo attack will ever be brought to justice remains, like so much else about Nigeria’s kidnapping economy, an open question.