Every single person in Nigeria’s Middle Belt knows someone who has been kidnapped or killed. The attacks are relentless. And Christians there are desperate for it to stop.
Amos Magani had spent 30 years as a missionary. Then, in 2017, Fulani Islamists snatched him off the road. “They kidnapped me and threatened me to stop preaching,” he says.
His captors dragged him deep into thick jungle. Guns pressed against his skin. They demanded cash—and mocked his faith. When he tried to preach, they sneered: “If you are preaching to me, get me a goat.”
After his family paid 200,000 naira—more than a year’s wages for most Nigerians—they let him go. But the kidnappers came back to his house soon after. He fled and hasn’t returned in nine years. He doesn’t even own a phone anymore; they took it, and he still can’t afford a replacement.
Their goal? Silence him. So he keeps preaching. Traveling. Refusing to break.
At a gathering of survivors, an Igwe—a tribal king from Sanga Local Government Area—stood up. “Our place is in danger every night,” he said. “We are running up and down.” Every day someone is snatched. “If you don't have money, they will shoot you.”
They killed a doctor. A trader. The Igwe’s own daughter was taken. His wife and children fled the region entirely. But as king, he must stay.
When kidnappers grabbed him, they demanded 5 million naira—plus a pack of Tramadol and energy drinks. Even after payment, they tried to grab his brother. “Five days ago, they came,” he said. “He slipped under the table and escaped.”
The Igwe knows exactly where the kidnappers hide: in a thick forest nearby. The army knows too. “We've conducted several air patrols,” he said. “Nothing has been done.”
Worse, kidnappers pass through military checkpoints with their victims. “The army seems not to be stopping them.” Everyone is too terrified to testify. “If you talk, you will be picked up and killed.”
He pleaded: “I am confiding in you because this town of Fadan Karshi is Christian-dominated. We always suffer the persecution.”
A pastor stood up next. Heads nodded across the room. “Instead of coming to defend us, the authorities are coming to disarm us,” he said. “Searching our houses to see if we have anything to defend ourselves.”
In Nigeria, private citizens can’t own modern guns. Villagers rely on hunters with muzzle-loaders or homemade rifles. The Fulani attackers come in groups of over 100, on motorcycles, carrying AK-47s. Vigilantes don't fight to win—they buy time so others can escape.
Even those primitive weapons get confiscated by police. Sometimes defenders end up in jail.
After years of daily murders and kidnappings, the fatigue is bone-deep. Survivors need months to recover—if they ever do. Everyone I spoke with at that gathering was exhausted, traumatized, desperate.
They want what anyone wants: to return to their villages, work their fields, send their children to school. But now they are displaced, landless, hungry. School fees? Impossible. Even walking to class is deadly.
Their lives have been stolen. And they just want them back.
