Nigeria - Suspected Boko Haram Islamist Kidnap Former Petroleum Minister In Maiduguri
https://nigeriaafrica1.blogspot.com/2013/05/nigeria-suspected-boko-haram-islamist.html
Former Nigerian Petroleum Minister Shettima Ali Monguno was abducted by gunmen outside a mosque in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, a military official said.
Monguno, 87, was petroleum minister when Africa’s biggest oil producer joined OPEC in 1972 and conference president at three meetings in Lagos and Vienna, according to the organization’s website.
“We are aware on the incident,” Sagir Musa, a spokesman for the military Joint Task Force in charge of the security in the state, said today by phone from Maiduguri, without giving further details.
Boko Haram Islamists active in the city are increasingly relying on kidnapping-for-ransom to fund their violent campaign for Islamic rule, Musa said on April 28.
The group group has carried out bomb and gun attacks in which hundreds of people have died in the country’s north and capital, Abuja.
Monguno had in the past urged President Goodluck Jonathan to engage Boko Haram in talks and consider giving them amnesty to end the violence.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 160 million people, is almost evenly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
“We are aware on the incident,” Sagir Musa, a spokesman for the military Joint Task Force in charge of the security in the state, said today by phone from Maiduguri, without giving further details.
Boko Haram Islamists active in the city are increasingly relying on kidnapping-for-ransom to fund their violent campaign for Islamic rule, Musa said on April 28.
The group group has carried out bomb and gun attacks in which hundreds of people have died in the country’s north and capital, Abuja.
Monguno had in the past urged President Goodluck Jonathan to engage Boko Haram in talks and consider giving them amnesty to end the violence.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 160 million people, is almost evenly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
