A Catholic priest who was abducted by armed gunmen on March 1 in central Nigeria was released late Tuesday, according to the state police of Benue State.
As Breitbart News reported, Father David Echioda was kidnapped on Sunday as he was returning from a missionary journey to celebrate Mass in the village of Utonkon, just hours after Catholic bishops and faithful marched in the nation’s capital of Abuja protesting the ongoing violence against Christians in the country.
Benue Police Command confirmed the release of the priest on Wednesday, declaring that no ransom had been paid.
At this point Echioda’s abductors have not been identified, but Christians in the region have frequently fallen victim to Islamist Fulani raiders who have sought to gain “a military foothold in the area,” according to local media reports.
According to an in-depth Wall Street Journal report from December 2019, Fulani militants are waging a systematic war on Nigeria’s Christians in a campaign to rid the country’s Middle Belt of non-Muslims.
In January 2018, Fulani fighters killed at least 80 persons in one of the more severe acts of anti-Christian violence.
Just last month another Nigerian priest, Father Nicholas Oboh, was kidnapped in south-western Nigeria, and subsequently released on February 18.
A month earlier, gunmen stormed the Good Shepherd Catholic Major Seminary in Kaduna State, also in central Nigeria, kidnapping four young Catholic seminary students. Three of the seminarians were eventually set free, but the fourth one, 18-year-old Michael Nnadi, was executed.
On Sunday, Nigerian Catholic bishops and faithful marched in Abuja to protest the ongoing abductions and slaughter of Christians by Islamist militants.
Led by the President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, Archbishop Augustine Akubueze, the protesters accused the federal government of Muhammadu Buhari of indifference to the plight of Christians as well as negligence in dealing effectively with the epidemic of violence.
“There have been too many mass burials, too many kidnappings of school children, travelers, invasion of people’s homes, invasion of sacred places like churches, mosques and seminaries,” Archbishop Akubueze stated.
The archbishop also said that President Buhari’s silence “is sowing and breeding seeds of mistrust” among the people, who do not believe he is committed to uprooting the problem. The president is also of Fulani ethnicity, leading many to speculate that he sympathizes with the criminals.
“As things stand now, it appears only a few Nigerians can defend you with reasons, only a few Nigerians can argue that your silence is not an endorsement of the barbaric actions of these terrorists and criminals,” he said.
“Nigerians are tired of hearing of the inexcusable actions of the government in their response to these and many other sad cases,” the archbishop said.
“As we march, pray and protest today, we want all Catholics in Nigeria not to be hopeless, we want Catholics and other well-meaning patriotic Nigerians to stand together and fight this terrorism,” he said.