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  • Defense HQ Confirms Pro-biafra Militants Hijacked Ship Over Kanu’s Detention
  • Nigeria separatists have hijacked a merchant ship
    and threatened to blow it up with its foreign crew if
    authorities do not release a detained leader agitating
    for a breakaway state of Biafra, military officers said
    Tuesday.
    Maj. Gen. Rabe Abubakar, the Defense Ministry
    spokesman, confirmed the hijacking occurred on
    Friday and called it “an act of sabotage.” He did not
    tell reporters the name of the ship.
    Abubakar spoke on Monday. Other officers on
    Tuesday told The Associated Press that the navy is in
    pursuit of the captured vessel. The officers, who
    spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue is
    sensitive, said the hijackers have given the
    government 31 days to free Kanu or say they will
    blow up the ship along with its crew.

    The ultimatum was given at the weekend by a militant
    identified by the nom de guerre of General Ben. Ben
    is not a separatist but “some Niger Delta militants
    have shown interest in working with us,” said Uchena
    Madu, a leader of the Movement for the Actualization
    of a Sovereign State of Biafra.
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    The hijacking indicates the separatists could be
    working with some Niger Delta oil militants blamed
    for recent bombings of oil pipelines in the oil-rich
    south, escalating conflict in a country already
    burdened by Boko Haram’s deadly Islamic uprising in
    the northeast and violent ethno-religious
    confrontations between farmers and herders in
    central Nigeria. Africa’s biggest economy and oil
    producer also is battered by slashed petroleum
    prices.

    Secret police on Oct. 17 detained Nnamdi Kanu,
    director of banned Radio Biafra, and since have
    accused him of terrorism, sparking protests in which
    police are accused of killing several demonstrators.
    Nigeria’s Igbo people prosecuted a civil war to create
    a separate state of Biafra in the southeast that killed
    a million people in the 1960s. Many Igbos charge
    they still suffer discrimination.

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