Christian university group leaders in Nigeria remain missing

Three weeks after the kidnapping of Scripture Union Nigeria’s national general director in southeast Nigeria, he and seven other fellowship leaders remain missing, according to reports.

Gunmen abducted Uwem Cosmos and the seven others on June 14 as they were returning to Scripture Union headquarters in Ibadan, Oyo state following a Scripture Union Campus Fellowship in Okigwe, Imo state, said Andrew Abah, director of Grace Foundation Missions International.

“Please, we need to raise prayers for their release and mobilize our other groups and platforms to pray for an unconditional release of God’s children from these horrible kidnappers,” Abah said.

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A prayer alert sent by various evangelical ministries stated the abductions took place at about 9 a.m. in Imo state.

A Scripture Union Nigeria statement noted that Cosmos was “with seven other persons in his car, including Ven. Onyenagbagha, Pastor Gbenga and his two daughters, the driver, and Elijah, the Media Officer. They have not arrived Ibadan since then.”

The last phone contact with them was at about 9 a.m., and since then all their phones have been off,” the Scripture Union stated.

[photo_footer] Uwem Cosmos, national general director of the Scripture Union of Nigeria.[/photo_footer] 

“Brethren, this calls for concerted prayers for their safety and well-being,” it stated. “Let’s call on God to intervene speedily on our behalf. Let’s treat this with utmost commitment.”

The Scripture Union Nigeria is a campus fellowship aiming to reach students in Nigeria’s universities and colleges with the gospel.

More Christians were killed in Nigeria than in any other country from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025, according to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List.

Of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith during that period, 3,490 – 72% – were Nigerians, an increase from 3,100 the prior year. Nigeria ranked No. 7 on the WWL of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

While the identity of the kidnappers remains unknown, Fulani militia and other criminal groups have made abductions commonplace in Nigeria.

Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not 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 strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.

Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe 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.

In the country’s North-Central zone, where Christians are more common than they are in the North-East and North-West, Islamic extremist Fulani militia attack farming communities, killing many hundreds, Christians above all, according to the report.

Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and the splinter group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), among others, are also active in the country’s northern states, where federal government control is scant and Christians and their communities continue to be the targets of raids, sexual violence, and roadblock killings, according to the report.

Abductions for ransom have increased considerably in recent years.

The violence has spread to southern states, and a new jihadist terror group, Lakurawa, has emerged in 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.

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