Abductions from Baptist school a ‘national disgrace’ say Nigerian Christians

President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack as ‘barbaric’ and promised that the federal government was working with the Oyo state government to rescue all the victims.

Armed men abducted 39 pupils and seven teachers in an attack targeting a Baptist school and two others in Nigeria’s southwestern Oyo State.

The attack took place on 16 May in Ahoro Esinle community in Oriire Local Government Area of the state. One of the abducted teachers was reportedly beheaded as the bandits moved their victims into the bush.

In what police described as a “coordinated attack”, armed men simultaneously raided the Baptist Nursery and Primary School in Yawota and two other schools in Esinle, seizing pupils and teachers.

President Bola Tinubu condemned the attack as “barbaric” and promised that the federal government was working with the state government to rescue all the victims.

“We expect a breakthrough soon,” he said in a statement released by his office.

Oyo’s Governor Seyi Makinde said one abducted teacher was killed on Sunday, citing a video received by authorities. He added that six suspects, including alleged informants and logistics suppliers to the kidnappers, had been arrested.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) condemned the attack and called the incident a “national disgrace”, warning that organised criminal violence is spreading dangerously into the southwest.

It expressed outrage that heavily armed attackers were able to storm multiple schools, terrorise communities, kill innocent people and abduct dozens of pupils and teachers.

The association said schools and children must not be surrendered to criminal groups, urging authorities to strengthen security around rural communities, forest corridors and suspected criminal hideouts.

“When children are hunted in their classrooms, silence becomes complicity and delay becomes dangerous,” the CAN warned in a statement on 18 May. “Nigeria must act decisively to defeat these criminal networks before more innocent lives are destroyed.”

The CAN president Archbishop Daniel Okoh, the leader of the Christ Holy Church International, said the invasion of schools by armed criminals in broad daylight reflected a frightening collapse of security across the country.

The statement called it “intolerable, disgraceful and utterly unacceptable that Nigerian children can no longer sit safely in classrooms without the fear of being kidnapped by armed gangs”.

“The invasion of schools by armed criminals in broad daylight, the murder of innocent citizens, and the forceful abduction of defenceless children represent a horrifying collapse of security and a direct assault on the conscience of our nation,” it continued.

“This is not merely another security incident. It is a national disgrace and a frightening reminder that organised criminal violence is spreading into parts of the country once considered relatively secure.”

The CAN also mourned the reported killing of an assistant headmaster who tried to protect the children during the attack, alongside other victims caught in the violence: “Their sacrifice must never be forgotten, and those responsible must be identified, apprehended, and prosecuted without hesitation.”

Nigerians, the statement said, “are exhausted by condolences without consequences and promises without protection” while the government’s failure to “dismantle kidnapping networks and armed criminal groups is steadily normalising terror across the country”.

The CAN warned that insecurity, once concentrated in parts of northern Nigeria, was now “spreading dangerously into the southwest and other regions, threatening national stability, public confidence and the safety of future generations”.

It called on the federal government, security agencies and the Oyo state government to take immediate and coordinated action to rescue the abducted victims and bring the perpetrators to justice.

“Every available security and intelligence resource must be deployed to secure the unconditional release of the abducted victims and bring the perpetrators and their collaborators to justice,” it said, affirming its solidarity with affected families, churches and residents of Oriire Local Government Area, while praying for the safe return of all the abducted.

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