The AUN-Adamawa Peace Initiative, a nongovernmental organization composed of religious and community leaders, has denounced the suicide bombing on Tuesday night in a local market in Yola, the Adamawa State capital.
“This senseless violence can never be condoned and we sympathize with the families of those who lost loved ones as well as those injured. Our peace and development work will not only continue but will expand in response to such terrorist acts,” the AUN-API said in a statement issued on Wednesday in Yola, by its Chair, President Margee Ensign of the American University of Nigeria.
The statement thanked the security agencies, hospitals, government, media, other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and all the good people of Adamawa State for their contributions to safety and security, and for their assistance to the wounded.
The second bombing in Yola in less than a month, on October 29, on the heels of a similar blast in a school mosque at the Jambutu area of Yola, AUN-API members, led by Dr. Ensign, paid a compassionate visit to the blast survivors at the Federal Medical Center, Yola, and the Adamawa State Specialist Hospital, Jimeta, as well as at the blast site. The group donated relief items while promising that API would return and work towards further assisting them.
Similarly, the group had responded with medical supplies in June when another blast in the marketplace caused mayhem leading to deaths and the hospitalization of many.
At an emergency meeting called in response to the October bombing, the Adamawa Peacemakers resolved to initiate counter-insurgency awareness training for local vigilantes, in conjunction with the security agencies of government.
AUN-API maintains that the masterminds of bomb blasts are “motivated by an evil ideology focused solely on destruction”.