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.”.....