A man claiming to be from Nigeria’s oil-rich south has tried to set fire to the state petroleum firm’s headquarters in what would have been the first such attack in the capital, the company said Friday.
The foiled attempt to set fire to the tank of a diesel generator at the NNPC complex in Abuja came just over a year after oil militants carried out an attack in the economic capital Lagos for the first time.
His alleged bid to set fire to the oil firm occurred late Thursday, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said in a statement. He was stopped and arrested.
The suspect’s motives were unclear and there was no indication he was linked to oil militants from the Niger Delta in the south who have carried out dozens of attacks and kidnappings in that region over the last several years.
NNPC called the suspect a “strange fellow” in its statement, which did not detail how close he came to carrying out his alleged plans.
Security agents found the suspect in possession of materials they say he intended to use to set fire to the tank of the diesel generator of the building, the NNPC said.
It did not provide details on the materials, but said he was “spotted after he made for the generator tank … after emerging from the nearby bush bordering” the building’s car park.
“For now all we know is that the man upon interrogation claimed that he came to Abuja from Port Harcourt,” it added. Port Harcourt is the main city in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
Militants have carried out a series of attacks in southern Nigeria in recent years, causing a drop in oil output, which has fallen to around a million barrels per day compared to 2.6 million barrels at peak production level.
They have claimed to be fighting for a fairer distribution of oil revenues in the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.