Man held after group claims responsibility for oil firm fire

Nigeria's security police have detained a man for questioning after he claimed his organisation set fire to the Lagos offices of the state-owned oil company, his lawyer said on Friday. Chris Nwokobia, who leads the previously unknown Youth Democratic Movement, allegedly called a number of media houses earlier in the week and said his group was responsible for a fire that razed the main office in Lagos of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on Tuesday. The action was to protest misrule by President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration, he was reported as saying. The fire, which started overnight, raged for 15 hours, sweeping through the 11 floors of the building as fire-fighters struggled to put it out. Obasanjo said vital documents related to the country's joint venture operations with several oil transnationals were destroyed in the blaze. Nwokobia surrendered to the state security police on Wednesday, his lawyer, Festus Keyamo, said. "He was arrested when I handed him over to the Lagos State director of State Security Services," Keyamo said. "I urge the authorities to arraign him in a competent court for any offence he may have committed." Obasanjo, who had ordered an immediate investigation into the fire, said on state radio on Saturday that while his government was ready to listen to the complaints of Nigerians it would not tolerate acts of terror by any individual or group. "Arson is the height of irresponsibility and it will be dealt with as such," he said.