Tears flow at Bauchi church bombing victims’ burial

Five of the victims of Sunday’s bomb attack on the Harvest Field Church of Christ near the Living Faith Church in Yelwa area of Bauchi metropolis were buried on Wednesday.

Their family members and friends wailed uncontrollably as their remains were being interred at the Christian Cemetery, Yelwa Tudun, Bauchi. Five other persons killed in the attack had earlier been buried on Tuesday.

Those buried on Wednesday included Mr. Dodo Hassan, a House of Representatives member during the Shehu Shagari administration; Mr. Effiom Itta, Reproductive Health HIV/AIDs official; Joseph Aiyebe, a final year engineering student of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi; and Samuel Olusegun, 16-year-old pupil of Divine Primary and Secondary School International, Bauchi.

Families and church leaders, as well as students of ATBU and Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, thronged the cemetery to pay their last respects to the deceased.

Chairman of the state Christian Association of Nigeria, Rev. Lawi Pokti, warned against retaliation.

He said 21 people died during the attack.

He said, “We still have some corpses in the hospital and by the grace of God, we will perform other burial on Thursday and Friday. We are burying them in batches depending on the readiness of their relatives.

“Vengeance is not ours but of the Lord. We are peacemakers because the Bible says, blessed are those who make peace. If there is a need to make peace, there must be love, so there is no way we can pay trouble with trouble but we pay back trouble with peace and love.

“I want to call on the Christian community to always trust the lord Jesus Christ, the Lord will fight for his church. There is no need to take laws into our own hands. As far as CAN is concerned, we condemn any person that shed blood after this bomb blast. So we called on youths not to embark on such act because anybody that does that is not a Christian. We can never accept or recognise him as a Christian and we will never stand behind him because the word of God condemns killings.”

THE PUNCH