The NKST Church says it has lost 5,987 members and 753 churches to violence in Benue State, a figure it cites while rejecting the Federal Government's proposed ranching pilot in the state.
Mkar-Gboko, Benue State — August 25, 2026
The NKST Church has disclosed that 5,987 of its members have been killed and 753 of its churches destroyed in Benue State amid years of sustained violence, a staggering toll the denomination is citing as it formally rejects the Federal Government's proposed pilot ranching programme for the state.
The figures mark a dramatic escalation from the church's own previous public accounting. In April 2025, NKST President Rev. Ambassador Nendaga Asôngo Adure held a press conference at the church's Mkar-Gboko headquarters disclosing that over 100 members had been killed between Easter Friday and that date alone, including a pastor and his wife shot dead in their residence.
At the time, Adure demanded a declaration of a state of emergency in Benue, a compensation and resettlement plan for affected communities, security protection for churches and clergy, and a dialogue and reconciliation framework, demands that, based on the scale of the newly disclosed figures, appear to have gone largely unmet in the sixteen months since.
The NKST's rejection of Benue's inclusion in the ranching pilot places the church alongside a rapidly growing list of Benue civil society and professional groups opposing the programme, including the Nigeria Catholic Diocesan Priests Association, the Benue PDP, the Mutual Union of Tiv in America (MUTA), and a joint coalition of Mzough U Tiv, Ochetoha K'Idoma, and Omi Ny'Igede, three of the state's largest sociocultural organisations, who separately argued the plan threatens land rights, food security, and constitutional federalism.
Given the scale of losses the NKST has now disclosed, the church's position adds particular weight to the argument, echoed by MUTA and others, that any conversation about land use in Benue must first address the fate of communities already displaced by years of violence, rather than opening a new front over land while the underlying displacement crisis remains unresolved.
The scale of the NKST's newly disclosed figures, nearly 6,000 deaths and over 750 destroyed churches, represents the church's own internal tally and has not been independently verified by government or international agencies. As of this report, neither the Benue State Government nor federal security agencies had responded to the disclosure.
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