BY UMAR YUSUF

To members of the headquarters of Christ Apostolic Church, Yola District Church Council, Friday 6th January 2012 was a dark day. The glorious hand of death took away 10 of its principal members, including a pastor, a wife of a pastor and choir master.

The ten members were in the church along with other worshipers when unidentified gunmen came into the church. They were armed with sophisticated weapons which they used in shooting a number of them of which ten died on the spot.

The four attackers were said to have entered the church twice. Two of them had detailed themselves to guard the main entrance to the church, while the other two carried out the operation of shooting the worshippers sporadically, while other members took to their heels.

Eye witnesses told Saturday Vanguard that it was a gory sight as pool of blood dominated the spectacle. The deceased and other members, according to the eye witnesses were having the last lap of a three- day prayer meeting for peace in Adamawa state and Nigeria but the attackers had a different mission from that of the worshipers who tasted death through a very hard way.

Gideon Shawari, who lost his father and brother in a similar incident in a Church in Jos, was also with other members of the CAC but he took to his heels when they were attacked. But he had to come back to the church to help pick the fallen heroes of the church into a pick-up vehicle to a specialist hospital in Yola.

...one of the victims

Some of the victims of the sad incident were either hospitalized or taken to the mortuary in Yola. Other victims were also hospitalized at the Federal Medical Centre Yola. Gideon told Saturday Vanguard that the relatives of the victims ran helter skelter in search of the where-abouts of the relations.

A parent of two of the victims, popularly called Mama Gbenga, who was one of those in search of her two sons told informants, that nobody was ready to actually disclose if her children had fallen victims of the sad incident or not, but on the second day, she came to realize that her two sons were dead and were in the mortuary.

According to her, ” I had gone to sympathize with relatives of the deceased , not knowing that I will also be sympathized with later.”

On Saturday, 7th January 2012, some youths had thronged the Yola Specialist Hospital, wanting the mortuary attendants to open the mortuary for them to identify the corpses. The attendants had insisted that they must have a directive from the higher authorities from the hospital, whom they said were also instructed by the government.

Ladi Emmanuel Timothy who is still being consoled by sympathizers said, her husband had a premonition of his death through a dream. According to her, he was a dream interpreter which she and her husband shared. He had a dream about a dead person. She said she also had a similar dream of death but none of them was sensitive to it.

“I have lost a great companion, an adviser, a counselor who was very humane and highly respected . My husband was a humble individual and had an unassuming personality” The couple had a baby girl, Victory Emmanuel Timothy.

A son of another victim of the Christ Apostolic Church massacre, brother Lekan Ezekiel who hails from Osun state lamented that the death of his father, whom he simply called Elder Ezekiel has marked the beginning of his problem in life.

Lekan who has just completed his university education spoke with Saturday Vanguard in tears, saying that with his father’s death, the entire family has been brought to a standstill.

He added that as the eldest son of the family, the entire responsibility now rests on him but he was quick to add, “how can I shoulder this responsibility as a jobless graduate?

“You can imagine , I saw him dying. I was watching when the gunmen entered our church and started spraying anybody they set their eyes on”, he spoke with anguish. He added “it was at this juncture that I saw my Daddy screaming in the pool of his own blood and he died instantly”.

Lekan further lamented that it was God that saved him and his mother through “My mother sustained serious gunshots on her legs”.

While commending government for their assistance, Lekan said no amount gives to the will bring back the love and care their father gives to them. He urged the government not to relent in their efforts to unmask those behind the act.