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In a mass Cabinet shuffle, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo relinquished his oil minister title in favor of Edmund Daukoru.
ABUJA, Nigeria, Jan. 12 (UPI) In a mass Cabinet shuffle, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo relinquished his oil minister title in favor of Edmund Daukoru.
Obasanjo did not explain why Daukoru, who was minister of state for petroleum resources, was made the new energy minister, the Vanguard newspaper reported.
The new energy minister recently ended his one-year tenure as the head of OPEC.
Nigeria is the world's eighth-largest producer of oil. However, during the last year, increasing violence associated with militancy has been blamed for reducing Nigerian oil production by 20 percent, according to a 2006 report.
Some officials in Abuja, however, claim that production is down by as much as 50 percent.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, have systematically kidnapped oil workers and other foreigners. Residents of the Niger Delta region, where most of Nigeria's oil is located, are extremely poor.
They have started organizing and taking action against what they view as unfair circumstances, where the government and oil companies are getting rich on the oil from their region.