A twist in the tale: 8 christian bombers arrested

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.