Abuja – Friday, March 24, 2023 at 10:10 am.
Pius Tabat and Stephen Amos were kidnapped along with two other seminarians on January 8, 2020. They were held captive and tortured for several days while their captors attempted to extort ransom from their families. One of the seminarians, Michael Nnadi, was killed.
Pius Tabat and Stephen Amos spoke about these difficult days at an internet conference organized by the worldwide Catholic aid organization Aid to the Church in Need.
“During the night we were woken up by gunshots. We didn’t know what was happening. When we got to the door, someone put a gun to our heads. He took our phones, gadgets and valuables and told us to come with him. We walked for three to four hours without knowing where to go. Later they put us on motorbikes and we rode until we arrived at our destination in the early morning.
They forced us and seven or eight other people to lie on the bare ground in a tent. We were crammed into the tent with about 12 people, in January, in the cold.
Later they asked us to contact our parents and inform them that we had been kidnapped. During the phone calls, they beat us. We cried with tension while our parents listened on the phone. This process was repeated over and over for about two weeks. Whenever we spoke on the phone, they would hit us.
Most of the day we sat blindfolded under a tree. We couldn’t lie down, our backs hurt, but we couldn’t do anything. We continued to be beaten: on the head, on the back, on any part of the body, every day without any compassion.
Our kidnappers were Fulani herdsmen, they spoke the Fulani language. We do not know what their motive was, but most of the people we met during our captivity were Christians. So it is not far-fetched to say that it was primarily an attack on our Christian faith. Muslim places of worship or leaders are never attacked in our area.
Food, water, motor oil – in the same container
We were fed rice, which we ate from a very dirty container. They used the same container to get fuel for their motorcycles, and we drank water from a stream from the same container. We could see and taste the engine oil, but we had no choice. Sometimes there was one meal a day, very rarely twice. We never changed our clothes. One of us got very sick. They took him, left him by the side of the road and told someone to pick him up. Luckily he survived.
When there were only three of us, we organized ourselves so that each day one of us would lead the others in a novena prayer and words of encouragement. Michael Nnadi was third, but he was killed on his second turn.
During those days, one of the kidnappers began asking questions and Michael attempted to explain the Christian faith to him. There came a point when the kidnapper asked to be taught the Lord’s Prayer, and Michael taught him.
Maybe that got out somehow or the kidnapper passed it on himself. They came one evening and took Michael. We thought he would be released, that was good news. Little did we know that he would be killed that day!
“We should call our parents to say goodbye”
Later the leader of the gang told us that they killed Michael and that they will kill us too if the ransom is not paid by the next morning. That was one of the longest nights of our lives. In the morning they called us and gave us our mobile phones. We should call our parents to say goodbye before they kill us. So we did, went back to our tent and put our lives in God’s hands. But that day we were not killed. Three days later they told us that we would be released. That sounded too good to be true – after so many days of imprisonment, after so much pain and beatings.
They drove us to an abandoned settlement on their motorbikes and dropped us off there. They told us to walk until we met a man who would take us back to the seminary. We found him and he took us back to the seminary on his motorbike. we were free
At this point we hoped that Michael was still alive and safe. In seminary we hoped that he was with us. Our superiors contacted the captors and were told where to find his remains. Then we understood that he had been murdered in cold blood, died a martyr’s death. His only crime was being a Christian and a Catholic seminarian.
We don’t think it was a coincidence that we were released four days after he was killed. It was as if his blood had set us free, as if he had paid the price for our freedom.
“We hold fast to our calling”
We were taken to the hospital and stayed there for about a week. We met our fellow student who had been released earlier and who was recovering. After we got better, we returned to our respective dioceses. There we were told to prepare to continue our education.
Our families were happy to see us again and thanked God for our release. When they found out about our decision to continue our education, there were no reproaches. Nor did they try to dissuade us. In fact, all that happened encouraged us. If God saved us from this situation, then he has a lot in store for us. We feel encouraged to hold fast to our calling.”
