Posted by by Ebimo Amungo on
Journalist Ebimo Amungo profiles Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, the leader of an armed group demanding more control of oil resources for the ethnic Ijaws, who are the biggest group in Nigeria's oil-producing region, the Niger Delta.
He last week caused scares in global oil markets by threatening to attack foreign oil workers.
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, known simply as Asari, is a 40-year-old Ijaw youth leader.
He was born Dokubo Melford Goodhead Junior, to a high court judge and a housewife.
He is the first of six children and had a middle-class upbringing in a Christian home.
He had his primary and secondary education in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, and was described as a respectful child.
Asari gained admission to study law in the University of Calabar, but dropped out in his third year in 1990 after repeated clashes with school authorities.
He abandoned a second attempt to earn a degree in law at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology due again to his activism.
It was about this period that he converted to Islam and adopted the name Mujahid Dokubo-Asari.
Any means necessary
In 1992, Asari attempted to get elected into the Rivers State House of Assembly but failed.
In 1998, he sought to be elected as the chairman of Asari-Toru local government area but lost again.