CASE STUDY NIGERIAN PRIEST SURVIVES ABDUCTION BY EXTREMISTS
Father Stephen Ojapah is one of many priests who have suffered terribly in the hands of terrorists demanding ransom payments. Between January and November 2023 alone, 23 priests, religious Sisters, and seminarians were abducted in Nigeria. Father Stephen was held hostage in inhumane conditions for 33 days at a remote location in northwest Nigeria. A group of gunmen seized Father Stephen while he was asleep in the middle of the night, at the rectory of St. Patrick’s Catholic Parish in Sokoto Diocese in late May 2022. The assailants also captured three other people staying in the building: assistant priest Father Oliver Okpara and two visitors – siblings Hassan and Ummie Hassan. The siblings had traveled to Sokoto to attend the funeral of Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a Christian student stoned to death by her Muslim peers, after allegedly sharing a blasphemous message in a WhatsApp group.
Father Stephen then encountered four other hostages – a Christian pastor and three members of his church – who had been captured a few days earlier and held in one of the huts. The terrorists went on to chain all their victims together to keep them from escaping. “The tears kept flowing… Very often, we stayed without food the whole day, and we drank very, very dirty water,” Father Stephen said. He recounted many other terrible instances of “physical and mental torture,” such as regular beatings, whippings, persistent verbal insults, and attempts to convert them to Islam. After a lengthy negotiation process and more than 20 phone calls between the kidnappers and Father Habila Samaila – a priest from Sokoto Diocese who had previously negotiated the release of hostages – Father Stephen and his fellow captives were freed.
Father Stephen subsequently underwent two periods of counseling. In summer 2022, shortly after his release, he received trauma care at a retreat center in Abuja. In September of the same year, he
Around 15 extremists entered the rectory and forced Father Stephen and the others to leave with them. Approximately 50 more terrorists were waiting for them outside, and the large group set out to walk a long distance to a forest. Father Stephen gave his shoes to his fellow captive Ms. Hassan and proceeded to make the entire journey on rough, rocky terrain barefoot. They “trekked for two days” before reaching their destination: a camp consisting of makeshift tents and huts. On their arrival, they were “welcomed with a heavy round of beating” – the first of many acts of torture they were to endure.
participated in another program in Kaduna to help him heal from the psychological torment he had experienced. Father Stephen went on to help establish O-Trauma Victims Initiative, an organization supporting survivors of abductions and other physical attacks in northern Nigeria. He has come to view the ordeal he had endured “as a unique opportunity to grow and discover more deeply the meaning and purpose of life.”
Father Stephen shortly after his release.
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