Nigerian seminarian reveals what happened when he was kidnapped
On the evening of January 8, 2020, four students at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna, Nigeria, were taken captive by a group of armed assailants. Three weeks later, one of them was dead. While the three others were free, they were traumatized — one so much that he has been unable to return to the seminary.
One of the seminarians, Pius Tabat, who was 19 at the time, told his story to a group of journalists in an online forum this week. He told Aleteia that it was reasonable to assume that the motive for the kidnapping was primarily anti-Christian persecution.
“I think they were Fulani herdsmen,” said Tabat, who is from the northern part of Nigeria. “While we were in captivity they would not use English or Hausa but the language of the Fulani. I can’t say what their motives really were, but looking at the fact that the captives were Christians, and the way our churches and priests have been attacked, it’s not out of place to say that it was an attack on our Christian faith.”
He said that after a long, forced journey on foot and motorbike, the captors put the seminarians in a room with others they had kidnapped elsewhere.
“There was a boy there who was not of our faith. He began asking about Christians, and Michael had to explain our belief to him,” he said, referring to Michael Nnadi, the 18-year-old seminarian who eventually would be killed. “He became interested in the faith and asked to be taught the Our Father.”
“Why did you kill the seminarian?”
Bishop Matthew Man-oso Ndagoso of Kaduna, who also participated in the online forum, sponsored by Aid to the Church in Need, interjected. “The kidnappers were arrested and brought to the seminary by the police, to show security agents how they got into the seminary,” he said. “Then they were interviewed. ‘Why did you kill the seminarian?’ They told journalists that one reason was that he was asking for conversion, that you should leave the things you are doing. Michael knew they were Muslims, and yet he was preaching to them, asking them to repent. I listened to what Pius said, and I think you can see the connection. So if they saw that he was teaching one of the captives the faith they probably said ‘We have to get rid of him.’”
“His only crime was being a Christian,” Tabat said.
