Diocese in Nigeria mourns death of priest killed in machete attack

(OSV News) — Police in northern Nigeria are investigating the murder of a priest who was killed in an apparent roadside ambush.

The Diocese of Lokoja announced the death of Father Samuel Opeyemi Oyetoro in a statement posted to Facebook July 30 and urged Catholics to pray for the slain priest.

“We commend our beloved priest to the infinite mercy of God, giving thanks for his faithful ministry, sacrificial love, and unwavering dedication to the people of God,” the diocese said.

According to an Aug. 3 report by Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency, a spokesperson for the Kogi State Police Command said police were called July 29 about “the lifeless body of an unidentified man” on a local road.

“Officers immediately rushed to the scene, where they found the deceased with severe machete wounds to the head,” the spokesperson said. “The body was transported to ASCL Hospital, where a doctor pronounced him dead, and he was subsequently transferred to the morgue for an autopsy.”

The victim, the statement read, was later identified as Father Opeyemi.

Ahmed Usman Ododo, the governor of Kogi state, condemned the killing as a “barbaric act” and assured the Catholic Church and the priest’s family that “the perpetrators will not escape justice.”

Ododo “directed security agencies to conduct a painstaking, professional and comprehensive investigation to establish the facts surrounding the killing and ensure that all those involved face the full weight of the law,” the governor’s office said in a statement published July 31.

The murder of Father Opeyemi is the latest in a series of increasingly violent attacks against priests, religious and lay Catholics in the country.

Four days after the priest’s murder, seven gunmen entered the Church of St. Joseph in Enugu state in southeastern Nigeria during Sunday Mass, Fides reported. The attackers kidnapped three people, including a seminarian, a catechist and a parishioner.

According to Fides, the catechist was able to escape his captors while police conducted a search operation. However, the seminarian and the parishioner remained hostages.

According to Aid to the Church in Need, Nigeria is the country with the largest number of kidnapped priests in the world.

In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said the country was facing “a terrifying crisis of religious violence” and expressed concerns in its 2026 annual report.

Nigerians “continue to face religious freedom violations and suffer a deeply tragic and ongoing crisis of violence” at the hands of “non-state militants espousing a violent interpretation of Islam,” said Vicky Hartzler, USCIRF chair and a former Republican member of the House from Missouri.

“The Nigerian government has for far too long been negligent in seriously and directly tackling the violence and its complex underlying factors,” she said.

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