The Catholic bishop of Makurdi (Nigeria), Mons. Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, has asked the faithful “urgent prayers” for the recovery of Fr. Solomon Atongo, a priest who was shot on May 24 on the road known as “The shortest route to hell.”
According to the Vatican agency FidesFr. Atongo, from the San Juan Quasi de Jimba parish, was seriously injured after being attacked by armed men on Saturday night.
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Fides explains that for two years, the Makurdi-Naka road in the state of Benue has become one of Nigeria’s most dangerous sections and that is why it is known as “the shortest route to hell.”
The Solomon Atongo priest is serious in the hospital, after receiving several shots in a jihadist attack in Nigeria.
Terror and fear about the Catholic Church will not overcome. That the blood of the martyrs is not spilled in vain.
Let’s pray for its prompt recovery. pic.twitter.com/JIDe6dsAbz
– Catholic University (@unicatolicos_es) May 25, 2025
The abandonment of its infrastructure and the dense vegetation around them have favored the actions of armed groups that use the area as hiding place. Their victims are usually kidnapped for extortive purposes, which then manipulate for extortion.
FIDES states that the priest was accompanied by two other people when his car was intercepted by armed criminals. After firing Fr. Atongo and giving it for dead, the strangers fled taking captives to the two accompanyers of the presbyter.
In a statement entitled “Urgent called prayers“And signed by the Chancellor of the Diocese of Makurdi, P. Shima Ukpanya, the diocese asks for” prayer for the rapid recovery of one of our priests, Fr. Solomon Atongo, who was attacked tonight “for” alleged terrorist shepherds. “
According to Fides, this would point to the armed bands of Fulani shepherds, nomadic Muslims who would be responsible for murders, robberies and kidnappings in several regions of the country.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.