PSJ UK is deeply concerned by the conflicting accounts surrounding the reported abduction of worshippers in Kurmin Wali, Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State. While the Kaduna State Police Command, through the Kaduna State Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Rabiu, dismissed reports of a mass kidnapping as false, independent findings from PSJ UK point to a disturbing reality: an abduction did occur.

Through direct community-based verification, our team engaged with grassroots-sources in the affected village. Their accounts state that worshippers were taken during church services. Further diggings indicate that as many as 177 persons were abducted, with victims’ names reportedly documented by community members. These are not rumours. These are people with families, faces, and futures now held in uncertainty.
We are particularly troubled by reports that security deployment in the area appears focused on restricting media access rather than urgently addressing the plight of those in captivity. While authorities may seek to prevent panic or unrest, peace cannot be built on denial, and calm cannot be enforced by silence when lives are at stake.

This moment raises fundamental questions: Who speaks for those still in the bush? Who accounts for the missing? And why is transparency being treated as a threat rather than a tool for justice?

PSJ UK believes that acknowledging harm is the first step toward healing and accountability. Denial delays rescue, deepens trauma, and erodes public trust. We call on the Kaduna State Government, security agencies, and the Federal Government of Nigeria to move beyond dismissals, open the affected areas to independent verification, and prioritise the safe return of all abducted persons.

Until every abducted worshipper is accounted for, silence remains complicity, and denial remains injustice.