A Nigeria Police Force Intelligence Response Team commander has warned churchgoers to stop publicly declaring financial achievements and personal milestones during church services, saying the practice exposes worshippers to criminal targeting.
The IRT commander, speaking on TV Platinum during a briefing on Thursday, told worshippers they cannot assume every person seated in a congregation carries good intentions.
“Everybody has his own motive of going to the church,” he said. “You can’t just think that they are all men of God. No.”
Evening Services on the Outskirts Pose the Highest Security Risk
The commander focused his warning on churches located on the outskirts of towns, where worshippers attending evening services face heightened danger after closing.
“After closing from evening service, such acts that they plan will be implemented,” he said. “You can’t go to a church located on the outskirts, and you go to evening prayer and close in the evening, coming down to your home, after making testimony of what you have achieved in life.”
His concern is direct. A worshipper who stands before a congregation and announces a new job, a vehicle, or a business breakthrough hands criminals a ready target. Once that person steps outside into the night, they carry both the information and the risk.
The commander said the practice does not conform with basic common sense. Sharing sensitive personal and financial details before a crowd of strangers, regardless of the setting, opens the door to kidnappers, robbers, and other criminals who may have entered the church with a mission.
IRT Commander Calls on Churches to Step Up Security Arrangements
Beyond individual behavior, the IRT commander placed responsibility on church leadership and security institutions to act.
“I believe the role of security institution must equally think of the security of their member and must advise them adequately,” he said.
He urged churches that hold evening services to put structured security measures in place, specifically monitoring the routes leading into and out of their premises.
“If you must hold evening services, and that has to be guided with a lot of security observation of the routes in and out and exits of those churches in and out,” the commander said.
He was blunt about the consequences of ignoring this. “You can’t just have members come into night and evening prayers, and you say a lot of things that ought not to be said, and you expect these men of the underworld will not plan anything against you.”
The Testimony Culture and Why Criminals Are Listening
The tradition of public testimony is rooted in Nigerian church culture. Worshippers regularly rise to share accounts of answered prayers, career breakthroughs, financial windfalls, and property acquisitions, often naming figures, locations, and timelines.
Theologians and pastoral voices have long argued that a genuine testimony should center on spiritual deliverance and divine grace rather than material status. The IRT commander’s warning adds a harder edge to that argument: beyond theology, the practice creates a live security intelligence briefing for anyone in the building with criminal intent.
Kidnappers and armed robbers do not need surveillance equipment when targets voluntarily announce their assets and movements before a seated audience.
Nigeria’s security landscape has seen worshippers targeted after church events, and the police have repeatedly linked criminal operations to information gathered from social settings, including religious gatherings. Exact figures on incidents tied specifically to church testimonies were not immediately available, but the IRT commander’s decision to address the issue publicly signals that security agencies consider it a pattern worth confronting.
The Intelligence Response Team operates as one of the Nigeria Police Force’s elite units, handling kidnapping cases, armed robbery networks, and organized criminal syndicates. When a commander from that unit steps before a camera to issue a public advisory on church behavior, the warning carries operational weight.
For now, the message from the IRT is simple. What you announce in church on a Thursday evening, a criminal may act on before you reach your gate.
