Let \(\mathcal {B}\) be an abelian category with enough projective objects and enough injective objects and let \(\mathcal {A}=\mathcal {B}\ltimes _\eta \textsf{F}\) be an \(\eta \) -extension of \(\mathcal {B}\) . Given a cotorsion pair \((\mathcal {X},\;\mathcal {Y})\) in \(\mathcal {B}\) , we construct a cotorsion pair in \(\mathcal {A}\) and a cotorsion pair \((\Delta (\mathcal {X}),\;\Delta (\mathcal {X})^\perp )\) in \(\mathcal {A}\) for \(\textsf{F}^2=0\) . In addition, the heredity and completeness of these cotorsion pairs are studied. We also state the dual versions of the main results for \(\zeta \) -coextensions of abelian categories. Finally, we give some applications and examples in comma categories, some Morita context rings and trivial extensions of rings to illustrate our main results.