Kidnapped pastor in western Nigeria slain after ransom payment

Suspected Fulani criminals in western Nigeria kidnapped and killed a Christian pastor despite receiving 5 million naira ($3,125 USD) in ransom, sources said.
 
The Rev. James Audu Issa of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) within the Ekati area of Kwara state was found dead within the wilderness on Thursday (Oct. 2) after he was kidnapped from his home inside ECWA premises in Ekati town, Patigi County, on Aug. 28.
 
“The pastor was killed by Fulani bandits terrorizing Edu and Patigi Local Government Areas in Kwara state,” area resident Peter Kolo said.
 
His captors initially had demanded an exorbitant sum of 100 million naira ($62,500 USD), Kolo said.
 
“The distraught relations of the pastor and the Ekati community were in a position to negotiate the sum all the way down to 5 million naira, which they paid in an effort to secure the pastor’s freedom,” he said. “After collecting the 5 million naira, the bandits exhibited extreme cruelty by demanding a further 45 million naira [$28,125]. Tragically, before any further negotiation could happen, Rev. James Audu Issa was killed by the Fulani bandits.”
 
The Rev. Romanus Ebeneokodi, spokesman of ECWA, issued a transient statement concerning the killing.
 
“This harmless pastor has been cut down, one amongst many, leaving his wife, children, clan, church and friends in agony,” Ebeneokodi said.
 
Ralph Madugu, editor of the ECWA’s Today’s Challenge Magazine, described the killing as one among many targeted attacks on Christians and their pastors.
 
“Yet there are some government officials denying that there’s genocide against Christians?” Madugu said.
 
Numbering within the tens of millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise lots of of clans of many various lineages who don’t hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
 
“They adopt a comparable technique to Boko Haram and ISWAP and exhibit a transparent intent to focus on Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
 
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they consider herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds.
 
Nigeria remained amongst essentially the most dangerous places on earth for Christians, in keeping with Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the countries where it’s most difficult to be a Christian. Of the 4,476 Christians killed for his or her faith worldwide in the course of the reporting period, 3,100 (69 percent) were in Nigeria, in keeping with the WWL.
 
“The measure of anti-Christian violence within the country is already at the utmost possible under World Watch List methodology,” the report stated.
 
In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they’re within the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many lots of, Christians above all, in keeping with the report. Jihadist groups similar to Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), amongst others, are also lively within the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities proceed to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, in keeping with the report. Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent times.
 
The violence has spread to southern states, and a recent jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged within the northwest, armed with advanced weaponry and a radical Islamist agenda, the WWL noted. Lakurawa is affiliated with the expansionist Al-Qaeda insurgency Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, originating in Mali.
 
Nigeria ranked seventh on the 2025 WWL list of the 50 countries where it’s most difficult to be a Christian.

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