NESTLED in the rolling savanna hills of Kwara State’s Ekiti Local Government Area, Eruku town embodies the quiet resilience of rural Nigeria, a place where ancient granite outcrops like Ilado Hill rise dramatically amid sprawling yam farms and cocoa groves.
With a population of roughly 105,000 across the 478-square-kilometre LGA (headquartered in nearby Arandun), Ekiti is a predominantly Yoruba enclave created in 1991 from the old Irepodun district, bordered by Ekiti State to the west and Kogi to the east.
Life here has long moved to the rhythm of subsistence farming (maize, cassava, and livestock), weekly markets, and remittances from relatives in Ilorin, sustaining modest mud-brick homes and a youthful population where more than half are under 30.
But in recent years, Eruku’s thick forests and porous borders have turned it into a bandit corridor, transforming a once-peaceful farming community into a place where fear now stalks the night.
The nightmare reached a horrifying peak on the evening of November 18, 2025, when masked gunmen stormed the Christ Apostolic Church in Oke Isegun during prayers, opening fire indiscriminately.
At least two worshippers were killed, one was injured, and the pastor along with more than ten others were dragged away into the bush. It was not an isolated atrocity.
In the preceding weeks, the Ilorin-Kabba highway had become a killing ground: five people gunned down in separate ambushes since early October, motorists abandoning vehicles and fleeing into the forest, farmers too terrified to tend their fields.
Schools across the LGA have been closed, markets operate in hushed panic, and the once-bustling town now empties by dusk.
Many see the repeated targeting of churches (this attack echoes the 2023 assault on Eruku’s Benedictine Monastery, where one monk was murdered and three abducted) as deliberate persecution of the town’s Christian majority.
Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has promised reinforcements and federal support, while President Bola Tinubu postponed foreign trips to focus on the crisis.
Yet residents remain sceptical, pointing to years of ignored distress calls and under-resourced patrols. In Eruku, where Christianity is woven deeply into daily life and community identity, the attacks feel personal, an assault not just on safety but on faith itself.
As elders gather beneath ancient baobab trees to plan vigilante patrols and pray for deliverance, the town clings to its resilience. But beneath the prayers lies a stark question: how many more sunsets can Eruku endure before the harvest, and hope itself, are lost to the night?