Nigerian military plane crashes in Niger; 2 dead

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — An airport official in the capital of Niger says a military plane from Nigeria has crashed, killing the two people aboard.

Chaibou Massalatchi, the head of Niamey's airport, said the plane had taken off Monday to do a reconnaissance mission.

The Nigerian military is taking part in the regional effort to support France's operation in northern Mali.

Nigerian Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade said two pilots were killed when the Alpha jet fighter went down 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Niamey.

France launched the military operation in January to oust al-Qaida-linked jihadists from power in northern Mali.

Some 6,000 troops from neighboring countries including Nigeria and Niger have been taking part, though Chad has said it's withdrawing its nearly 2,000 soldiers.

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Police: 39 killed in Nigerian ethnic clash

YOLA, Nigeria (AP) — Police say at least 39 people have been killed in ethnic violence in a rural town in Nigeria.

The attack happened Friday in Wukari, a town in Nigeria's Taraba state.

A state health official and residents said Saturday that others were also injured in the violence that sparked during a funeral service that pitted the Jukun people against the Hausa Fulani. Taraba state police spokesman Joseph Kwaji later said at least 39 people had been killed.

Officials later placed the town on a 24-hour curfew, forcing everyone indoors.

A similar round of violence in February in the town killed more than 20 people.

Nigeria, home to more than 160 million people, has more than 250 different ethnicities. Violence can start over politics, business, grazing rights, religion and other issues.

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S.Africa: Nigerian 2010 bomb suspect gets 24 years

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African court sentenced a Nigerian to 24 years in prison on Tuesday after finding him guilty of masterminding twin car bombings in Nigeria.

Henry Okah was found guilty in January for the October 2010 bombing in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, that killed at least 12 people and wounded three dozen during a celebration to mark the country's 50 years of independence.

The South African Press Association reported that Judge Neels Claassen of the High Court in Johannesburg announced Okah's jail sentence, which includes 12 years in prison for each bombing and 13 years for threats made to the South African government after his October 2010 arrest. The 13 years will be served concurrently with the 24 years.

Okah was a leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, which claimed responsibility for the blasts.

The group accused Nigeria's government of failing to alleviate poverty in the delta, even though it earns billions of dollars from the region's oil. In 2006, militants from groups like MEND started a wave of attacks targeting foreign oil companies, including bombing their pipelines, kidnapping their workers and fighting with security forces.

When Okah was convicted, Judge Claassen had said the state had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and the Nigerian's failure to testify meant the evidence was uncontested. Okah was found guilty on 13 counts of terrorism.

Okah, who had been living in South Africa, said the case against him was politically motivated.

In 2008, he was arrested in Angola and extradited to Nigeria, where he was accused of treason and terrorism and linked to a gunrunning scandal involving high-ranking military officials. His arrest and trial sparked an escalation in MEND attacks.

That violence ebbed in 2009 with a government-sponsored amnesty program promising ex-fighters monthly payments and job training. However, few in the delta have seen the promised benefits and scattered kidnappings and attacks continue. And MEND itself, once a powerful, media-friendly militant group in the region, has seen its influence wane since the amnesty.

Charges against Okah were dropped and he was freed in July 2009 as part of an amnesty program.

MEND had issued statements threatening to attack South African interests in Nigeria because of Okah's prosecution in South Africa.

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Nigerian police: Expatriate kidnapped is British

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A British businessman was abducted Saturday in Lagos, a rare case of expatriate kidnapping in this West African nation's commercial center, Nigerian police said Tuesday.

Nigeria's police spokesman Frank Mba told The Associated Press that kidnappers probably followed their victim as he was leaving a nightclub in Victoria Island, one of Lagos' most exclusive and safest neighborhoods, at about 11 p.m.

Mba would not say if the kidnappers had demanded a ransom and did not give any other details.

The U.K. and U.S. governments had mentioned the kidnapping in separate security warnings issued Sunday, leaving out the victim's nationality.

Kidnappings for ransom are common in Nigeria, but most have occurred in its oil-rich southern delta. Lagos, a city of 17.5 million inhabitants, is in the country's southwest.

Mba said police are investigating, saying, "Lagos does not have a reputation for kidnappings and we want to keep it that way."

In recent years, Nigeria has had a spate of ransom kidnappings, which usually last for a few days and which have focused on the country's oil-rich region. However, Nigeria's north has also started to see politically-motivated kidnappings which typically last much longer. Kidnappings there have been linked to Islamic extremist groups rather than criminal gangs.

Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement Tuesday that "there is no indication of terrorist involvement at this stage." The statement did not confirm the victim's nationality or provide any new details.

The kidnapping comes a week after men claiming to be members of the radical Boko Haram Islamic network said in an unverified video that they would not free a kidnapped French family unless Nigeria and Cameroon freed all the group's members from their jails. The family was kidnapped on Feb. 19 in Cameroon, near the border with northern Nigeria.

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Achebe inspired generations of Nigerian writers

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was just 10 years old when she first read Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking novel "Things Fall Apart."

She devoured the rich use of Igbo proverbs in his book, which forever changed Africa's portrayal in literature.

That inspiration carried over into the creation of a pivotal character in her debut work, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," which pulls readers into the dark and greedy world of Nigerian Internet scam artists.

"Like many contemporary Nigerian writers, I grew up on a literary diet that comprised a huge dose of Achebe's works," she said. "My parents were so proud of his accomplishments, and quoted the Igbo proverbs in his books almost as frequently as they quoted Shakespeare."

Achebe's death at the age of 82 was announced Friday by his publisher. His works inspired countless writers around the world, though the literary style of "Things Fall Apart," first published in 1958, particularly transformed the way novelists wrote about Africa.

Adewale Maja-Pearce, a literary critic who succeeded Achebe as the editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series, called him a pioneer whose "contribution is immeasurable."

In breaking with the Eurocentric lens of viewing the continent through the eyes of outsiders, Achebe took readers to a place full of complex characters who told their stories in their own words and style.

Achebe once wrote that a major goal "was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent."

He resisted the idea that he was the father of modern African literature, recalling a rich and ancient tradition of storytelling on the continent. Still, his influence on younger writers of the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly those from his homeland, was undeniable.

"Achebe's influence has been completely seminal and inspirational, and there are writers that have been called the School of Achebe who have imitated his style," said Chukwuma Azuonye, professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

A newer crop of successful novelists with ties to Nigeria has broken away from Achebe's mode, Azuonye said, developing their own modernist style of writing that focuses on clashes of cultures and other issues facing Nigerians abroad.

Nigerian novelist Lola Shoneyin, whose works include "The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives," says Achebe's fiction gives her something new each time she reads his work.

"In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," she said.

Igoni Barrett, the author of a collection of stories called "From Caves of Rotten Teeth," said Achebe had achieved a "saintly status among Nigerian writers" through his pioneering involvement in the African Writers Series.

"Chinua Achebe was an inspiration to me not only for his singular talent and his dedication to truth in art and life, but also because he had the fortitude to overcome the countless disappointments of the Nigerian state," he said.

One of Senegal's best-known novelists, 66-year-old Boubacar Boris Diop, was in high school when he read "Things Fall Apart." He says that in it, he found "the real Africa."

"I systematically advise young authors to read Chinua Achebe. I've often bought copies of 'Things Fall Apart' and offered them to young writers. It's well written — in the sense that it's not written at all. In it, you won't find any great lyrical phrases. That's the great force of this book. It's written in simple language," said Diop.

"He wrote about a continent that is far from perfect, but which at the same time has things within it that fill you with wonder."

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Larson reported from Dakar Senegal. Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi also contributed to this report.

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French hostages held by Nigerian sect in new video

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — A video surfaced Monday showing a man who appeared to be a French hostage held by Islamic extremists with six other family members kidnapped on Feb. 19 in northern Cameroon.

The video's audio airs a man's voice that identifies himself as Tanguy Moulin-Fournier. He says that his family is being held by the Islamic radical sect known as Boko Haram which wants all its members freed, especially women and children held in Nigerian and Cameroonian custody.

Boko Haram has been waging a campaign of bombings and shootings across Nigeria's north. They are held responsible for more than 790 deaths last year alone, and dozens more since the beginning of this year. On Monday bombings in two northern cities killed at least 17 people.

Moulin-Fournier said his family is not doing well in captivity.

"We lose force (strength) every day and start to be sick; we will not stay very long like this," Moulin-Fournier says in the recording.

The family has been held hostage for 25 days, he says in a shaky voice, giving the only date indication on the recording. The family comprising of Tanguy, his brother, his wife and their four children was kidnapped outside a national park in Cameroon's Far North region.

The video was not immediately available, but a media source who viewed it says it shows the Moulin-Fournier family, including the four children. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

"They will not be able to get the seven hostages unless they free our members," one of the family's captors says in the recording, speaking in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.

This is the second video showing the Moulin-Fournier family since another video was posted on YouTube three weeks ago.

"The living conditions are very hard," Moulin-Fournier said, "hot (the heat), water, food, sleep, life in the desert, et cetera —conditions even more difficult for the white men that we are who are not used to the African hot and for the kids."

The video comes days after French foreign minister Laurent Fabius visited Nigeria and Cameroon as part of a campaign to get the hostages freed. He said that, in addition to the family of seven, extremists also hold an eighth French national who had been working on a renewable energy project in northern Nigeria. It is not clear which extremist group currently holds the French engineer kidnapped on Dec. 19.

Fabius said he had been working with Nigerian and Cameroonian authorities using an approach that he described as "determined and discrete."

The hostage situation is exacerbated by the recent killings of other foreign captives held by a splinter group of Boko Haram.

European diplomats said those seven foreign workers who had been kidnapped from a construction site in northern Nigeria on Feb. 16 had been killed by their captors after a video showing some of the corpses was made public. The killings stoked fears about the extremists' readiness to execute their hostages.

However Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told journalists Monday that all seven hostages from the construction project may not be dead. Those seven hostages include two Lebanese nationals, one citizen each from the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, and two people now believed to be Syrian. Lebanese President Michel Sleiman, who visited President Jonathan in Abuja Monday, said that he still had hopes that some of the hostages would be freed.

Jonathan said that he told Sleiman that if all seven had been killed, Nigeria will make every effort to retrieve their bodies.

But even as Jonathan spoke, Monday, Nigeria was hit by more extremist violence.

Two secondary schools were attacked in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, leaving a teacher dead and three girl students injured, military spokesman Sagir Musa said. He blamed the Boko Haram sect and said local security forces had killed three of its members in a counterattack.

Hours later, at least 16 people were killed in explosions at a bus station in the northern city of Kano, according to medical officials. No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but suspicion fell once again on Boko Haram.

"The federal government will not be stampeded, for any reason whatsoever, into abandoning its unrelenting war against terrorists in the country," said Nigerian presidential spokesman Reuben Abati in reaction to the Kano blast Monday.

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Associated Press reporters Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Salisu Rabiu in Kano and Bashir Adigun in Abuja contributed to this report.

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Nigerian airline back in air after 2nd suspension

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — An aviation official says a Nigerian airline can resume flying, after being grounded twice in the past year.

Nigerian aviation ministry spokesman Joe Obi said in a statement late Monday that aviation authorities have lifted the suspension imposed Saturday on Dana Air with immediate effect.

Obi said, however, that a Dana Air plane which experienced problems over the weekend would remain grounded.

Dana Air had only been flying for three months after being grounded because of a serious air crash last year. The airline was grounded for seven months following the crash on June 3, 2012, which killed more than 160 people.

The tragedy, which killed all aboard and others on the ground, brought Nigeria's aviation industry under increased scrutiny.

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Another major Nigerian airline halts flights

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A carrier that has been battling to regain flyers' confidence after a fatal crash last year says it has suspended its flights.

Dana Air spokesman Tony Usidanem said Sunday that Nigeria's aviation ministry asked for the suspension in a letter received Saturday. He said the letter did not state a reason why.

Usidanem said a meeting with the ministry Monday would bring more clarity.

The ministry spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

A Dana Air crash on June 3 left more than 160 people dead, leading the carrier to lose its license. It resumed its operations two months ago.

The suspension comes days after another major airline halted its operations over a strike.

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Clinton: Nigerian poverty fuels religious violence

ABEOKUTA, Nigeria (AP) — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that Nigeria must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty across the nation's predominantly Muslim north in order to halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists there.

Clinton's comment comes as Islamic terror groups have claimed the kidnappings of foreigners in recent days from the region and Nigeria's weak central government appears unable to contain the spreading violence. He said that poverty remains the main driver for the attacks and needs to be addressed by strong local and federal government programs.

Extremists from a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram killed at least 792 people last year in Nigeria, according to an Associated Press count. Fighters who said they belong to Boko Haram claimed responsibility Monday for the kidnapping of seven French tourists in northern Cameroon. Ansaru, which analysts believe is a splinter group from Boko Haram, has claimed the kidnappings of seven foreigners — a British citizen, a Greek, an Italian, three Lebanese and one Filipino — all employees of a Lebanese construction company named Setraco.

"You have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don't have it," Clinton said Tuesday. "You have all these political problems — and now violence problems — that appear to be rooted in religious differences and the all the rhetoric of the Boko Harams and others, but the truth is the poverty rate in the north is three times of what it is in Lagos," Nigeria's largest city.

Clinton said that oil-rich Nigeria, which earns billions of dollars from its oil industry and is a major supplier to the U.S., must not take a "divide the pie" approach toward attacking poverty. That appeared to be a subtle reference to the endemic corruption that envelopes government and private industry in the country.

"It's a losing strategy," the former president said. "You have to figure out a way to have a strategy that will have share prosperity."

Poverty is endemic in Nigeria, and corruption has siphoned away billions in oil earnings since the country began exporting crude more than 50 years ago. Government statistics show that in Nigeria's northwest and northeast, regions besieged by Islamic insurgents, about 75 percent of the people live in poverty.

Analysts say that poverty, despite decades of military rule by leaders from the north, coupled with a lack of formal education has driven the region's exploding youth population toward extremism. Those attacks also have strained relations between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

Clinton spoke Tuesday in Abeokuta as part of an awards ceremony put on by ThisDay newspaper and its flamboyant publisher Nduka Obaigbena, who has invited the former president several times to Nigeria, along with other celebrities. The event, put on by a newspaper publisher sometimes accused by his staff of not paying them from months at a time, was also attended by former Nigeria military ruler and President Olusegun Obasanjo.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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