Kidnapped From the House of God

What began as a Tuesday evening service at Christ Apostolic Church in Eruku, Kwara State, turned into a live-streamed kidnapping that dragged 38 worshippers into the forest and left three people dead. Nearly 40 days after the bandit attack, Pelumi Salako visits Eruku to speak with survivors.

Written by Pelumi Salako

Mar 22, 2026

Photography by Pelumi Salako / THE REPUBLIC.

This story appears in our print issue, ‘100 Years of Ladi Kwali: Stories from Another Nigeria’. Buy here.

Eruku, Kwara State—The congregants had sung and danced in worship to God for 30 minutes, after which a pastor took the microphone to lead them in prayer, when sudden gunshots rang out from the northeastern part of the church compound. Some of the church members, eyes still shut in prayer, did not budge, thinking it was their old sound system, which occasionally made a loud shrieking noise, or the grungy generator powering the service. Then more persistent shots followed, and the church security officer ran in, blood trickling out from a gunshot wound in his back, to warn them to lie face down.

That was when Joshua Timileyin, one of the worshippers, knew he had found himself in the middle of a deadly affair. It was just past 6 p.m., 30 minutes into the service. ‘Before I could look around, they had entered the church. I did not run because I did not want to risk getting shot. So, I just lay under the pew,’ Timileyin, 24, told me in an interview at the church auditorium, 36 days after the incident. ‘Three bullets whizzed past my head, and some pierced through the wooden chair; its pieces entered my ears, and my head became hot.’

As this nightmarish bandit attack unfolded on 18 November 2025 at Christ Apostolic Church, Oke-Isegun in Eruku, a quiet agrarian town in Kwara State, thousands of people around the world watched in real time through a Facebook livestream. The video showed congregants scampering around, including an old woman who could barely run. Some hid under pews, some ran into the offices behind the pulpit and others ran out but were intercepted by gun-toting bandits. Those who escaped were the agile ones who dashed through the gate or scaled the fence.

A place of sanctuary, in the twinkle of an eye, had become a bloody battleground. On the wall above, a medium banner displayed the church’s watchword for the year 2025: ‘Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy testimonies,’ culled from Psalm 119:22 in the Bible.

In the video, some of the bandits were packing the bags and belongings of church members, (which could lead viewers to believe this was a robbery attack). But, outside, bandits were rounding up congregants to march into the forest: this was indeed a kidnapping. Out of the 43 people they initially rounded up, five escaped, leaving 38 hostages. When the bullets stopped raining after the church kidnapping, three lifeless bodies were found in the pool of their own blood. The security officer and two other men were hit by bullets.

Sporadic gunshots rang through the community that evening, throwing the townsfolk into pandemonium. They did not see the attackers, but the proximity of the shots made it clear that something dreadful was unfolding in their immediate environment. ‘Nobody knew what was really happening; people were panicking and were running helter-skelter,’ the Owa of Eruku, Oba Busari Olarewaju, recalled.

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