The police in the northern Nigeria state of
Bauchi said Sunday they had arrested eight
Christians suspected of planning to blow up
their own church, because of what appears
to be an internal dispute.
The arrest came just hours after a suicide
bomber attacked a church in nearby central
city of Jos, a police chief told AFP.Eight
members of the Christian Church of Nigeria,
whose headquarters was bombed in Jos
earlier in the day, were arrested in the
village of Miya Barkatai.
Bauchi state police commissioner
Ikechukwu Aduba said officers acting on a
tip off had gone to the church and arrested
the eight suspects in possesion of an
improvised bomb they planned to
detonate.”Preliminary investigation has
shown that the eight are aggrieved
members of the church as a result of
internal wrangling within the church
community,” said Aduba.
“The explosive found on the suspects is a
home-made bomb,” Aduba said.The
Christian village in the predominantly Muslim
state, lies 25 kilometres north of Jos where
three people died and dozens others injured
when a suicide bomber rammed his
explosive-laden car into the COCIN church
yard.A local Christian leader said the
suspects were members of a faction of the
church opposed to the siting of the church’s
district headquarters in the area.
“They are members of the church locked in
an internal squabble with the leadership of
the church over the relocation of the church
headquarters in the area,” said Shaaibu
Nbyal, head of the Christian Association of
Nigeria in the northeast of the country.”The
dispute has been raging for a year,” Nbyal
said by phone from Bauchi.
No comments:
Post a Comment