Explosions hit three TV viewing centers
during high-profile soccer match.
JOS, Nigeria – Joshua Dabo, like other
young Christians in this city in central
Nigeria, had dreams for his life. He had
graduated from a Christian high school,
Mt. Olives Secondary School, and at 31
was finally looking forward to attending
university.
Apart from commitment to his fellowship
at Nasara Baptist Church at Tirji
Junction near the University of Jos,
Dabo ran a barbershop to earn income as
he awaited admission to college, and he
was an ardent soccer player and fan.
As such he made sure to be among the 120
people from the Christian community on
Bauchi Ring Road who paid to watch a
classic soccer rivalry, Barcelona FC v.
Real Madrid, on TV at an outdoor bar
(called a “viewing center” in Nigeria)
on Saturday night (Dec. 10). A few
minutes into the match, televised in the
hall of corrugated sheet metal at
Yangwava Television Viewing Center at
Ukadum village, a bomb went off.
“It was shocking for me,” said viewing
center owner Emmanuel Exodus Nimkun, 30,
of the Ukadum congregation of the Church
of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN). “I saw
Joshua Dabo standing without a head. I
have never seen a thing like this – a
human being standing but with his head
blasted off, and he was struggling to
move.”
Dabo was the lone fatality in three bomb
blasts targeting viewing centers in
predominantly Christian areas of Jos
during the Spanish soccer match; at
least 10 others were injured in the
blasts, leaving four in critical
condition, including two in a coma.
Nimkun told Compass that he was bleeding
and his back was hurt after the
explosion, but he held Dabo and brought
him down.
“I began to cry, and suddenly there were
shouts that another bomb was hidden in a
bag beside the viewing hall that had not
exploded,” he said. ‘We all ran out, and
then a policeman came to the scene. He
picked up courage and went to check the
bag, and the device was intact.”
A few minutes later, military personnel
arrived and took the device away, he
said.
“They told us that the battery of the
device had run out, and that that was
the reason it did not explode,” Nimkun
said. “If it had exploded, they told us,
the destruction could have been
massive.”
Nimkun said his cousin was badly injured
and was among six people taken to Jos
University Teaching Hospital.
A worker with the Plateau State
Independent Electoral Commission, Nimkun
said he opened the TV viewing center for
additional income, never considering
that it would become a target for Muslim
extremists. The culprits were unknown at
press time, but the area has a history
of Christian-Muslim conflict.
“I cannot reconstruct that place again,
because it will keep reminding us of
that sad incident – if only for the
remembrance of Dabo, I will not reopen
that place again,” he said. “This is a
person killed not because he has done
anything wrong but because he is a
Christian.”
Danladi Dabo, Joshua Dabo’s older
brother and a member of Nasara Baptist
Church, said he was at home when he
first heard an explosion at another
viewing center, in Jos’ Tina Junction
area.
“Knowing that my brother is a soccer
fan, I raced to the viewing center near
our house to alert them, but just about
100 meters to the place, my fears were
confirmed as a bomb exploded,” Dabo
said. “I was dazed by the explosion, but
I kept running there, knowing that my
brother was in there. On getting there I
found my brother’s body but with no
head. I was shocked.”
Family members buried Joshua Dabo on
Sunday (Dec. 11).
Danladi Dabo said that Christians in Jos
have reached out to their Muslim
neighbors, but Muslims seem uninterested
in peaceful relations with Christians.
“The government has urged us to live
peacefully with each other, but while we
Christians have accepted to live
peacefully with Muslims, they have
continued to attack us,” Dabo said. “I
pray and urge the Nigerian government to
take decisive steps to stop these
killings, now that they know that
Muslims are the aggressors.”
Damaged House
One of the survivors of the attack,
22-year-old Gift Danjuma of Zumunci
Baptist Church in the Ukadum area, told
Compass that her family has lost four
members to religious conflict in Jos in
the past three years.
“I thank God that I survived this
attack, but this is becoming too much
for us,” she said. “In the last three
years we’ve had four members of our
family killed – Umaru Haruna, Salami
Mainoma Dutse, Esther Ishaya, and Ruth
Danladi.”
Muslim extremists killed Haruna, Ishaya
and Danladi as they returned from work
in 2008, while Dutse was killed in 2010
while returning from a church activity,
she said.
“Unless the Nigerian government does
something urgently to curtail these
attacks on us Christians by Muslims, we
will get to the point that Christians
will have no other option than to fight
back in order to stay alive,” Danjuma
said.
At Tina Junction along the Bauchi Ring
Road in Jos, where the first bomb
exploded, Hiroshima Ishaku Nyam, a
member of the Jos Jarawa COCIN
congregation, told Compass that his
house was damaged by the bomb at the TV
viewing center opposite his house.
“I was sleeping when the sound of a loud
explosion woke me up,” Nyam said. “The
entire house was shaking and vibrating.
Suddenly the ceiling in my bedroom and
the living room caved in.”
He switched on a flashlight but could
hardly see anything, he said.
“There was dust all over,” Nyam said. “I
struggled until I found my way out of
the room. It was then that I heard
people outside our house shouting that a
bomb had exploded at the TV viewing
center opposite our house.”
Nyam said his family had travelled to
Abuja for a church program, so he was
able to restrain himself from running
out to check on them. Some 20 minutes
later, he heard gunshots outside,
confirming his resolve to stay inside.
Ironically, he said, the University of
Jos had organized a peace meeting that
brought together area Christians and
Muslims a few meters from one of the
bombed viewing centers.
Nyam said that after the bombings, it
will be difficult for Christians to
trust Muslims again.
“How will Christians be convinced that
Muslims really want genuine
reconciliation in the face of the
bombings and secret killings of members
of Christian communities going on in the
city of Jos?” he said.
The third TV viewing center bombed is
located opposite the University of Jos
Staff Quarters along Bauchi Ring Road.
It is also a few meters away from a
Christian ministry known as City of
David.
James Daniel, 22, an apprentice
carpenter and a member of the
Evangelical Church Winning All Nasarawa
Gwong congregation, told Compass that
about 100 Christians were watching the
soccer game at the TV viewing center.
Daniel, whose carpentry workshop is near
the TV viewing center, said the bombs
planted at Tina Junction and Ukadum went
off first.
“Most of the viewers here are Christian
students of the University of Jos who
reside here,” he said. “Thank God none
of them died, as most of them only
sustained injuries.”
Daniel said that ever since the
Christmas Eve bombings in the Angwan
Rukuba area of Jos last year, Muslims
have targeted Christians through
bombings or secret killings.
Plateau state has seen religious
conflict since 2001.
Memory Verse