A 63-year-old pastor from Akwa Ibom State has cried out for help after kidnappers refused to release his 23-year-old son despite collecting a N500,000 ransom payment more than five months ago.**
Pastor Aniefiok Assian of the Solid Rock Kingdom Church said his son, Utibeabasi, was taken on December 3, 2025, and he has not seen him since.
The pastor shared his painful story in an interview with The PUNCH on Saturday.
According to Assian, the kidnappers initially demanded N30 million after taking his son. The family negotiated and agreed to pay N500,000. The money was sent into an account belonging to “Uzo Onuoha Enterprise” through a Point of Sale (PoS) machine.
“They told me that I should pick up my son at the Abak Local Government Area in the evening,” Assian said. “My wife and I went to a central point called Ekom Iman Junction, waited for their call, and from the day the ransom was paid till this time, those who kidnapped my son have not called again.”
The kidnappers used the victim’s own phone number throughout their communication with the family.
The pastor said his son left home on the morning of December 3, 2025, to buy clothing material for their church convention. He never returned.
“He is the kind of child that any father on earth would like to have as a son,” Assian said, describing Utibeabasi as a choir leader who often slept in the church on Saturday nights to attend early prayers.
The pastor reported the matter to multiple security agencies, including the Anti-Kidnapping Unit, the Department of State Services (DSS), and the Special Weapons and Tactics Unit (SWAT).
But he expressed deep frustration with the response he received.
“When I call them, they always tell me that they are on the matter. Later, when we call them, they would not answer,” he said. “When I visit them, they behave as if they do not know me or have never seen me before, even when I have paid the money they demanded.”
Assian claimed that at one point, SWAT asked him to pay N100,000 for a fresh tracking exercise. Each phone number analysis, he said, costs N50,000.
“I asked them why I should pay for a new tracking exercise when the same tracking had been done before,” he said. “I told them that it was embarrassing and a way of taking things for granted, and I said I would not come back to them again.”
He praised one officer from the Anti-Kidnapping Unit who tried to help. That team was able to identify who received the ransom money but could not find the PoS operator.
However, the pastor said no one was able to obtain the call log or identify the person who lured his son out of the house.
“Based on the tracking, there is a central man who called people, who in turn called my son,” he explained. “It is a very easy tool to handle, very easy, but none of them used the tracking to do the real work.”
Assian also revealed that his son had a disagreement with some young men in his church branch before his disappearance. The issue was over an emblem with the words “Stay wicked,” which the pastor said was linked to cultism.
“My son told them that they should remove the emblem from the church,” Assian said. “They told him that his father did not own the church and, as such, he had no right to stop them. They threatened that they would ‘block’ him and beat him up on the road.”
The pastor reported those young men to the police, but officers said there was no evidence linking them to the kidnapping.
The victim is a final-year Theatre Arts student at the University of Uyo. The dean of his faculty and the Head of Department have visited the family, according to the pastor.
Assian said his wife is completely devastated.
“You don’t need to be in this house to know what she’s going through,” he said. “She’s completely devastated and crying. Even this morning, she was lamenting and crying. Once that happens, I become more heartbroken.”
Despite everything, the pastor said he still has hope.
“After tears, there will definitely come happiness,” he said. “It is said that there are tears in the night, but joy comes in the morning. Because of the God whom I worship and because that boy serves God diligently, even better than I do, the family is hopeful.”
He appealed to the police to do more. “I would still love them to carry out the whole operation,” he said. “That boy fasted for three consecutive days. God can never disappoint that boy. God can never disappoint me.”
