ON Sunday, terrorists walked into three churches in Kurmin Wali, Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, blocked the exits, and marched 172 worshippers into the forest at gunpoint. Nine escaped. The rest 163 people, including children remain in captivity.
The Christian Association of Nigeria reported it immediately. Eyewitnesses confirmed it. Families wept. Clergy raised the alarm.
And the Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Muhammad Rabiu, stood before cameras on Monday and called it “falsehood peddled by conflict entrepreneurs.”Let that sink in for a moment.
In an area that everyone and I mean everyone knows is an epicentre of banditry, where kidnappings have become so routine that communities now budget for ransom payments, the police commissioner looked Nigerians in the eye and denied that 172 people were snatched from church pews during Sunday service.
The local government chairman, Dauda Madaki, joined the denial party. He claimed he visited the church, spoke to the village head, spoke to the youth leader, and found “no evidence of the attack.” No evidence. In a community where families were counting missing relatives and compiling lists of the abducted.
Either Madaki is the most incompetent administrator in Nigeria’s history, or he was reading from a script that had nothing to do with reality.I’ll give you one guess which one it is.This wasn’t confusion. This wasn’t a case of “we need more time to verify.” This was a coordinated denial ,swift, emphatic, and insulting to every family member frantically searching for their loved ones.
When CAN insisted the abduction happened and said they were compiling victim lists, the police didn’t say “we’re investigating.” They accused CAN of causing chaos. They threatened “the full wrath of the law” against “rumour mongers.”
Think about that. Armed men abduct over 160 Christians from three churches in broad daylight, and the government’s first instinct is to threaten the people reporting it.What kind of playbook is this?
The Commissioner of Internal Security, Sule Shauibu, even claimed that CAN leadership “interacted with the people of the area” and found the reports “completely false.” False. As if 163 people vanished into thin air on a Sunday morning and their families decided to lie about it for fun.
Then on Tuesday night after the public condemnation became too loud to ignore the police issued a new statement. Through their spokesperson Benjamin Hundeyin, they suddenly admitted, “subsequent verification from operational units and intelligence sources” confirmed the attack “did occur” and many people were kidnapped.
So which is it? Was it a falsehood on Monday or did it occur by Tuesday? Did reality change overnight, or were they lying on Monday?Here’s the question that should keep every Nigerian awake: Why would government officials and security agencies deny a mass abduction in a known bandit hotspot?
I have a theory, and it’s not pretty.
With the United States increasingly vocal about what they’re calling a genocide against Christians in Nigeria, every high-profile attack on churches becomes an international embarrassment. The optics of 172 Christians kidnapped during church service while the congregation sang hymns, while children sat in Sunday school is catastrophic.
So the knee-jerk response was denial. Flat-out, brazen denial. Maybe they thought if they denied it fast enough and loud enough, the story would die before CNN picked it up.
Maybe they thought CAN would back down. Maybe they genuinely believed Nigerians are too tired to fight back.
They were wrong on all counts.The other possibility is even darker: that local government officials are so terrified of admitting security failures in their jurisdictions that they’ll gaslight grieving families rather than acknowledge reality. Because in Nigeria, admitting there’s a problem means you’ve failed. And failure means your political opponents will use it against you.
So instead of mobilising rescue operations on Sunday night, they spent Monday calling it fake news.
In any sane society, Dauda Madaki would have tendered his resignation by now.
Let’s be clear about what he did. He stood before reporters and denied that an attack happened in his local government. He claimed he visited the area, spoke to local leaders, and found no evidence. He accused unnamed sponsors of fabricating the story to destabilize Kajuru.
Then 24 hours later, the police admitted the attack happened. So either Madaki is criminally incompetent unable to verify a mass abduction in his own jurisdiction or he knowingly lied to the public while 163 people were being marched deeper into the forest.Which is worse?
If Madaki genuinely couldn’t confirm that 172 people were missing from three churches, then he has no business running a local government. If he knew and denied it anyway, then he’s complicit in whatever happens to those hostages.
Governor Uba Sani eventually visited Kurmin Wali on Wednesday and promised to ensure “the safe and speedy return” of the victims. He pledged a military base for the community, a new road, a healthcare center. All good promises.But the governor also said something revealing: “We should not be talking about numbers or politics.”
Except his own police commissioner and local government chairman made it about politics when they denied it happened. They turned 163 kidnapped Nigerians into a political football, and now we’re supposed to pretend that didn’t happen?
This isn’t the first time. Remember when bandits attacked the Nigerian Defence Academy and we were told it was impossible? Remember the chibok girls kidnap ?Remember when they shot down a military jet and some officials still called them “bandits” instead of terrorists? Remember the endless denials, the minimizing, the gaslighting?
Nigerian authorities have perfected the art of denying what everyone can see with their own eyes. It’s become a reflex. Attack happens. Government denies. Public outcry forces admission. Government promises action. Nothing changes. Rinse and repeat.
But this case is particularly grotesque because it involved mass abduction of worshippers during church service. These weren’t travelers on a highway. These weren’t farmers in a field. These were families in the house of God on Sunday morning.And the government’s first move was to call their families liars.
The Kurmin Wali denial tells us something important about where Nigeria is right now. When government officials will lie about mass abductions in broad daylight, when police commissioners will accuse Christian leaders of fabricating kidnappings, when local government chairmen will gaslight entire communities ,we’ve crossed a line.
This isn’t about protecting state security or preventing panic. This is about protecting political reputations at the expense of human lives.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that the terrorists staged the attack while services were ongoing at ECWA church, Albarka Cherubim and Seraphim, and Haske Cherubim and Seraphim. These are real churches. Real congregations. Real people who woke up Sunday planning to worship and went home counting the missing.
CAN was right to condemn the “initial security response” for lacking “due diligence and empathy.” That’s diplomatic language for what actually happened: the government lied, got caught, and then tried to pretend the lie was just “caution.”
The police claimed Commissioner Rabiu’s denial was “aimed at preventing unnecessary panic.”
That’s insulting. What creates panic is when families report their relatives missing and the government tells them they’re making it up.
Whether it’s 163 people or 16 people or 1 person kidnapped during church service, the response should be the same: immediate deployment of rescue operations, coordination with local leaders, honest communication with the public, and accountability for security lapses.
What we got instead was denial, accusations, and threats against the people reporting the crime.
Governor Sani said something else on Wednesday that caught my attention: “Whether it was one person that was abducted or 100 people, it is the responsibility of Kaduna State government to protect the lives and property of the people.”He’s right. And that responsibility starts with telling the truth about what happened.
Dauda Madaki needs to resign. If he can’t verify a mass abduction in his local government or worse, if he lied about it he’s unfit for office.
Muhammad Rabiu owes Nigerians an explanation for why he called a confirmed attack “falsehood” and threatened journalists and church leaders with prosecution.
And the Inspector General of Police needs to explain why it took public condemnation to force his team to admit what was obvious from day one.These 163 people are still out there. Their families are still waiting. And every hour of denial, every minute spent playing politics with their lives, makes rescue harder and tragedy more likely.
In a sane society, the officials who denied this attack would be the ones facing “the full wrath of the law.”But we all know which society we’re living in.
- Nda-Isaiah is a political analyst based in Abuja and can be reached on jonesdryx@gmail.com. His syndicated column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Saturday.