PREVALENCE OF KIDNAPPING OF CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND THE EROSION OF SOCIAL ORDER IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The core responsibility of the government is to protect lives and property. In the last decade, Catholic priests had been the target of kidnappers in Nigeria, thereby negatively impacting the Church and social order. This study examined the kidnapping of Catholic priests and the erosion of social order in Nigeria. The study was guided by the assumptions of the social contract theory developed by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Utilizing secondary data obtained through media reports, journal articles, government publications and church publications, the paper employed thematic-content analysis to make sense of the data elicited for the study. The results revealed a widespread threat, with the Port Harcourt Diocese reporting the highest number of cases (20.65%), followed by Owerri Diocese (17.03%), Kaduna Diocese (11.23%) and Onitsha Diocese (10.87%). The kidnapping of Catholic priests in Nigeria spanning the period of  2015 and 2025, has been a systemic and escalating crisis with far-reaching consequences for social order, undermining security, disrupting religious life and weakening public trust and communal stability. The implication of the finding for the study is that the widespread and targeted kidnapping of these harmless men of God, reflects a deepening security crisis in Nigeria, revealing the country’s inability to protect religious figures and emphasizing the pressing need for comprehensive security and socio-political interventions. Addressing this requires comprehensive security reforms, socio-economic interventions and enhanced collaboration between the Church, communities and the government, to restore public safety, religious dignity and societal stability.