Nigeria: Top pipeline bomber arrested

Pipeline thefts: Nigeria claims to have arrested ringleader

AP/SCANPIX

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By News wires

 29 June 2012 20:30 GMT

Nigerian authorities said on Friday they had arrested the leader of a network of crude oil thieves in the Niger Delta responsible for several pipeline bombings against oil majors including Shell and Eni.

Nigeria is the world's eighth biggest exporter of crude oil but thieves siphon off around a fifth of its output by drilling into pipelines, blasting them open or diverting crude at loading stations, sometimes with the connivance of security forces, Reuters reported.

The operations, called bunkering, cost Nigeria's government nearly a fifth of its revenue each year, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said. It is also a major cause of oil spills that often wreck the delta's wetlands environment.

The Nigerian military paraded Seiyifa Gbereke, or General Cairo as he was nicknamed, in…

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