Nigerian police denied reports of simultaneous attacks on churches in the northwestern state of Kaduna over the weekend, even as residents shared accounts of church kidnappings in interviews on Tuesday.
A state lawmaker, Usman Danlami Stingo, told The Associated Press on Monday that 177 people were kidnapped by an armed group on Sunday. Eleven escaped and 168 are still missing, according to the lawmaker and residents interviewed by the AP.
Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Muhammad Rabiu, described news reports of the attacks as rumours, saying police visited one of three churches in Kajuru district and "had no evidence of the attack".
It is common for police and locals to have conflicting accounts of attacks in Nigeria's hard-hit villages.
"I am one of the people who escaped from the bandits. We all saw it happen, and anyone who says it didn't happen is lying," said Ishaku Dan'azumi, the village head of Kurmin Wali.
Nigeria is facing several armed groups launching attacks across the country, including Boko Haram and Daesh-WAP, which are motivated by religion, and other amorphous groups commonly referred to as "bandits."
Rights group Amnesty International condemned the "desperate denial" of the attack by the police and government.
“The recent mass kidnapping clearly shows that President Bola Tinubu and his government do not have an effective plan to end the years of atrocities by armed groups and gunmen that killed thousands of people,” the group said in a statement.
A Kaduna-based Christian group, Christian Solidarity Worldwide Nigeria, said in a press release that security operatives did not allow its members to visit the sites of the attacks.
"The military officer who stopped the CSWN vehicle said he had a standing order not to allow us in," said Reuben Buhari, the group's spokesman.
The Chikun/Kajuru Active Citizens Congress, a local advocacy group, released a list of hostages. The list could not be independently verified by the AP. Police did not respond to a request for questions about the list.
The Christian Association of Nigeria also verified the attacks and has a list of hostages, according to a senior Christian leader in the state, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears for his safety.
"This happened and our job is to help them. These people came, attacked and took people from churches," he said. "But I think they prefer to play the politics of denial and I don't think that's what we want."
Attacks on religious places of worship are common in conflict-torn northern Nigeria. They are part of the country's complex security crisis that also affects schools, as in November when hundreds of schoolchildren and their teachers were kidnapped in another part of Kaduna.
In recent months, the West African nation has been the target of the US government, which has accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians in the country, leading to a diplomatic rift. The US launched an attack against a group suspected of being members of the ISIS group on Nigerian territory on December 25, an operation the Nigerian government said it was aware of.
