Mourners lined the streets of Brixton south London yesterday to remember the drowned schoolgirl Bunmi Shagaya

Mourners lined the streets of Brixton, south London, yesterday to remember the drowned schoolgirl Bunmi Shagaya.
The body of the 11-year-old was found floating in a lake at Cany-Barville, near Dieppe, earlier this month, three days after she disappeared on a school trip to northern France.Bunmi’s coffin was drawn through the streets in a carriage pulled by two plumed horses, amid emotional scenes. Later, Culture Secretary and local MP Tessa Jowell joined her family at a packed memorial service in Lambeth Town Hall.”Bunmi’s death has touched hundreds and thousands if not millions of people in the country who followed the dreadful events in France,” said Ms Jowell, “and for every person there is a sense of ‘what if? How would I cope?’.”Bunmi’s 19-year-old sister Rukiyat broke down in tears and had to be supported by her brother as she read a tribute. “Bunmi was a great girl with a real sense of humour,” she said. “She loved drawing and singing and dancing in the house.”Her parents Salinata and Hamed sat behind the coffin, crying throughout.The family was joined by pupils and teachers from Bunmi’s school, Hillmead in Brixton, who sung songs and read poetry dedicated to their classmate.

Teacher Collete Anderson described Bunmi as “an excellent example to everyone in the class”.Bunmi had been on a trip with 40 other pupils and six teachers from Hillmead. She was found in shallow water less than 40ft from the beach at Cany-Barville, where a party of 16 children had been playing and swimming under the supervision of two staff. Police believe that she must have strayed from the group and into water outside a designated area.The trip to northern France was Hillmead’s first foreign excursion, and will now be the subject of an inquiry which magistrates hope will establish who is to blame for Bunmi’s death.After saying prayers at the Nigerian Muslim Association Mosque on the Old Kent Road, the cort? proceeded to Streatham Park Cemetery, where the burial took place.. The Mormon church has become the biggest foreign landowner in Britain, using the income from its vast holdings of prime farmland to spread its fundamentalist teaching in the Third World. The Mormon church has become the biggest foreign landowner in Britain, using the income from its vast holdings of prime farmland to spread its fundamentalist teaching in the Third World.
The latest purchase is the 2,000-acre Stubton Estate near Grantham, Lincolnshire, which it bought last month for around £5m. The deal has brought the amount of agricultural land the Mormons own to 15,000 acres – an amount so large that the church ranks alongside the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, and Railtrack as a major land holder. Estate agents estimate the church has spent at least £30m on prime British farmland in the past six years.Its fast-growing agricultural investment mirrors the growth of the church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Although mainly based in the United States, it now has 180,000 members in Britain, based in 40 regional centres or “stakes”. It first began buying land in Britain in 1995, and has since snapped up some of the most productive farmland in East Anglia.The Mormons say they are buying land to produce income for the church as a long-term investment. Chris Jolliffe, general manager of the church’s farming company, Agreserves, said that the crops it grows, such as wheat, provide food for the Third World. Other crops such as sugar beet are sold, with profits funding other humanitarian projects. In the past three years, £2.5m has been made from the farms and used to support Mormon work in Ethiopia and Kenya.”Our interest in farming is a very practical one,” said Mr Jolliffe “Food is a necessity, a hedge against adversity. When there are natural disasters we help our own first as a priority, but we do try and care for others as well.”Agriculture has a special place in Mormon history. The Mormon church was founded in New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith after he claimed to have discovered a religious text buried on his parents’ farm.