The incident occurred around 1:30am on Monday when the hoodlums invaded the church staff house in the Jos North Local Government Area of the state where Reverend Garba Andu Bawa and his family lived.

According to Nigerian Tribune, the bandits had on their arrival in the community shot sporadically to scare people away before forcefully entering the Reverend’s house.

He was said to have engaged the hoodlums and in the process escaped but the wife was not lucky.

After the pastor’s escape, the gunmen carried out a thorough search of the premises and discovered where the wife was hiding and took her away.

According to the report, gunmen around 8:50am contacted the family and demanded a ransom of N50million.

A resident of the area, who did not want his name in print, said the community was under the siege of kidnappers and armed robbers, adding that all security measures put in place to tame the situation had not yielded any positive results.

“Living in this place has become a nightmare, attack on this community has become daily occurrences, and most residents cannot go to sleep with their two eyes closed. We have engaged vigilantes and taken other security measures yet these elements keep having their way,” he said.

SaharaReporters’ efforts to get the reaction of state police command were unsuccessful as the Command’s spokesman, DSP Alfred Alabo, could not be reached on the telephone.

He also had yet to respond to a text message.