Text Messaging Will Enable Consumers to Check Authenticity; Spate of Fatalities Included Antifreeze-Laced Cough Syrup

LAGOS, Nigeria—Biofem Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a Nigerian medicine distributor, wanted to arrest a slide in sales after a counterfeit ring targeted its best-selling drug. Sproxil Inc., a start-up founded by a Ghana-born Ph.D. student at Dartmouth, promised to do what Nigerian authorities could not: help companies and consumers detect fake pharmaceuticals.

Sproxil’s founder, 28-year old Ashifi Gogo, overcame initial skepticism and a lack of funding to persuade investors to back a technology that offers a quick counterfeit-drug test. The technology could pave the way for wary foreign drug makers to enter the huge African market. The market includes Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country by population but one rife with scams and scamsters.

“Initially it was challenging because venture capitalists run for the hills when they hear Nigeria,” Mr. Gogo said in a telephone interview. “They don’t even care if you’re making gold.”

The company has developed technology that allows customers to use their mobile phones to check on newly purchased drugs. Using scratch-off labels and ID numbers, customers can send a code via text message to a database in the U.S. to check whether the medicine they purchased is authentic. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest mobile-phone market, with more than 70 million users.

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ABUJA, Nigeria—Hundreds of protesters rallied Wednesday in this country’s capital, piling political pressure on a government that is already reeling from a leadership shakeup and deadly violence in a nearby city.

The demonstrations in the Nigerian capital of Abuja took aim at the country’s absentee president, Umaru Yar’Adua, and voiced frustration at what is seen as a leadership vacuum in Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria, also a major oil exporter, has been engulfed in a series of crises, from militant attacks on pipelines to Sunday’s slaughter, in which Muslims allegedly killed hundreds of Christian, in villages outside the city of Jos.

After the violence, Nigeria’s vice president, Mr. Jonathan, sacked the country’s national security adviser. The new security adviser, retired Gen. Aliyu Gusau, is a prominent figure in Nigeria who has served as National Security Adviser to two former heads of state.

The security official’s dismissal fueled speculation that the government may have known about imminent attacks. Jonah Jang, the governor of Plateau State, told reporters that shortly before Sunday’s violence he had warned the country’s military that an attack was imminent, but that they didn’t respond.

On a separate front, Mr. Jang sent a letter to the Senate president, a fellow member of the ruling political party in Nigeria, asking for help to resolve political infighting in the state. The letter, which was viewed by the Wall Street Journal, was dated March 2, five days before the massacres outside Jos.

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DOGO NAHAWA, Nigeria— The attackers came at night and surrounded this small farming village, firing shots in the air to scare residents from their homes. Men, women and children were hacked with machetes as they rushed out. Several houses were set on fire with residents still inside.

Details are beginning to emerge from attacks Sunday on four villages in central Nigeria, where witnesses say members of the predominantly Muslim Fulani ethnic group targeted villages that were home to members of the mostly Christian Berom ethnic group. On Monday, local officials counted 378 bodies in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Rasat, Zot and Shen.

The dead, in a freshly dug mass grave, included a pregnant woman and at least one infant. A few miles away in Jos, a city of a half-million at the crossroads of Nigeria’s Muslim north and predominantly Christian south, troops patrolled the outskirts and set up checkpoints. There was a light police presence in Dogo Nahawa.

“I was sleeping at night next to my husband when I heard shooting,” said villager Nomi Dung, 38 years old, her eyes red. “My husband told us to run, but I said, ‘No I will not run—even if I die, let me die in my home.’ My husband ran, and entered into the [attackers'] hands. My children ran outside because they were afraid from the shooting.”

Ms. Dung could not finish. A relative said her three children, ages 8, 5 and 3, had been killed.

The latest violence compounds the political uncertainties in Africa’s most-populous nation. With sub-Saharan Africa’s largest Muslim population, Nigeria has largely avoided extremist ideology. But the threat of a deepening religious divide adds to security problems and a leadership vacuum that have prompted worries that one of the world’s largest oil-producers could be careening out of control.

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Camp of Ailing President Says Vice President Will Rule for Now

By WILL CONNORS

ABUJA, Nigeria—The return of Nigeria’s ailing president after a three-month medical absence sets the stage for a showdown over who will ultimately call the shots in Africa’s most-populous nation.

President Umaru Yar’Adua, who had been receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia, returned home early Wednesday but remains too ill to govern, according to a presidential spokesman.

Mr. Yar’Adua, who didn’t make a public appearance, offered a message of support for his vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, who was appointed acting president earlier this month by the Nigerian National Assembly, to serve until the return of the president.

“President Yar’Adua wishes to reassure all Nigerians that on account of their unceasing prayers and by the special grace of God, his health has greatly improved,” presidential spokesman Segun Adeniyi said. “However, while the president completes his recuperation, Vice President Jonathan will continue to oversee the affairs of state.”

That statement appears to start a clock toward the return of Mr. Yar’Adua, 58, whose absence with kidney and heart problems left the country in political limbo. Stepping into the president’s role earlier this month, Mr. Jonathan has reshuffled the cabinet, made long-delayed government appointments and has held meetings with foreign oil companies to calm international investors and the public.

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BY ROBB M. STEWART IN JOHANNESBURG AND WILL CONNORS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

In Africa, Bharti Airtel Ltd. appears determined to wade into a market loaded with poverty, promise and major legal tussles—just like home in India.

Bharti, headed by Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, has seized on a potential $9 billion deal with Kuwait’s Zain, or Mobile Telecommunications Co., that, if completed, would catapult the company into the ranks of major telecom operators in Africa. Combined with operations in India, Bharti would have significant footholds in two continental markets. The deal would include the assumption of $1.7 billion in debt.

Bharti isn’t the only telecom operator eager for a piece of Africa. On Tuesday, a consortium involving China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. bid $2.5 billion for the former state telecoms monopoly in Nigeria, according to the National Council on Privatization. The government body said that the China Unicom-led consortium outbid four other contenders by more than $1.5 billion for Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd., or NITEL.

While Bharti is an adept operator in India, with 120 million subscribers, it confronts hurdles in Africa, from vicious price wars to bitter legal battles.

Acquiring the Zain operations, which cover 15 countries, would give Bharti a head start over rival trying to buy scattered operations or acquire licenses in different African countries. Bharti’s bid also comes at a time when new undersea cables are reaching Africa.

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By WILL CONNORS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA, And SPENCER SWARTZ IN LONDON

Nigeria’s new acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, is attempting to breathe life into the nation’s ailing energy sector just two days after assuming the duties of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who has been out of the country since November with health problems.

Mr. Jonathan summoned several executives from foreign oil companies on Thursday to meet with top Nigerian officials. A focal point of the talks: militants who have sabotaged pipelines, disrupting production and oil prices.

Mr. Jonathan is Nigeria’s first president from an ethnic minority or the Niger Delta—an area the size of England that is rich in oil but long plagued by poverty and violence against the energy industry. That ethnic background could help him work with militants in consolidating the peace process, say officials and analysts.

“There’s concern that the militants are getting irritated and worried,” said Emmanuel Egbogah, the president’s oil adviser.

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LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s lawmakers moved Tuesday to end the political stalemate created by an absentee president and hand the job to his second in command, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, who so far has shown no outward sign of wanting to run the troubled oil-rich African nation.

After weeks of what participants say were heated backroom debates, both the Nigerian House and Senate passed resolutions Tuesday to make Mr. Jonathan acting president until ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua returns from treatment abroad and is proven fit enough to resume his duties. The resolutions give Mr. Jonathan, a fish biologist-turned-politician, the authority to pass legislation and command Nigeria’s armed forces, the most forceful move to date to fill a vacuum left by Mr. Yar’Adua’s absence.

Some lawmakers, however, challenged the resolutions, saying they violated the constitution because a transfer of power requires written consent from the president. That opposition has setup a clash that threatens to draw out the country’s political crisis, rather than resolve it.

“It’s a joke; you cannot look for political solutions by going against what the constitution says,” said House of Representatives member Kunle Fasinro, from Lagos State, who voted against the resolution. “We need to know what the actual condition the president is in. I don’t know, nobody knows,” the lawmaker added.

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LAGOS, Nigeria—The government of Ghana blocked the estimated $4 billion sale of a stake in a huge oil field, foiling months of talks between potential buyer Exxon Mobil Corp. and the stake’s owner, Kosmos Energy LLC.

The government accused Dallas-based Kosmos of cutting Ghana’s state-run oil company out of discussions about the field’s development and then sharing information about the field with potential buyers without government permission. The government in recent months itself has scouted for partners to work with Ghana’s oil company, including state-run China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Ghanaian Energy Minister Joe Oteng-Adjei said state-run Ghana National Petroleum Corp. would be the only entity allowed to buy the Kosmos stake in the so-called Jubilee field.

Last week, he sent a letter to Exxon informing the company that a deal with Kosmos wouldn’t receive government approval.

The letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said the government is “unable to support an Exxon Mobil acquisition of Kosmos’s Ghana assets.”

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By SARAH CHILDRESS And WILL CONNORS

KADUNA, Nigeria—As a child in this northern Nigerian town, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used to chastise his banker father for not giving more money to the poor, invoking his family’s adherence to the tenets of Islam.

“He preached to his father all the time,” said Mahfuz Datti, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s childhood friend.

This week brought word of a different sort of family gathering. Mr. Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear, began cooperating with federal law-enforcement agents last week, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Providing rare behind-the-scenes detail of how the U.S. is handling the case, these officials said Mr. Abdulmutallab ended a month of silence after receiving visits over several days from family members.

The terrorism allegations against Mr. Abdulmutallab have brought international attention to his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, one of Nigeria’s richest men, who approached U.S. authorities in November with concerns about his son’s radicalization. The latest family visit appeared to mark a stark split between the two: On Wednesday, officials confirmed that Mr. Abdulmtallab’s mother and siblings, not his father, were at the visits. “The father and son’s relationship is broken,” said a senior U.S. law-enforcement official.

An examination of the lives of the 70-year-old father and the 23-year-old son shows they were shaped by similar experiences and shared many traits, including a withdrawn seriousness and devotion to Islam. The father became one of Nigeria’s top bankers, with extensive Western and Nigerian contacts. The son, who came of age amid sporadic religious clashes in his hometown and attended elite schools abroad, would ultimately be drawn to violent extremists.

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LAGOS, Nigeria—Vandals over the weekend punctured an oil pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, say Nigerian military and security officials, highlighting how an illicit oil-theft industry in the creeks of the Niger Delta continues unchecked.

The breach that occurred Saturday was originally reported to have been the work of militants bucking a five-month cease-fire with the government. But the pipeline damage was caused by “vandalism and not an explosive attack,” said a western oil executive responsible for security and knowledgeable about the situation.

It was unclear how much production was affected. On Sunday, Shell said that the breach had shut down three flow stations after “a leak was observed on the Trans Ramos Pipeline.”

A Shell representative declined to comment on lost production or the cost effect of the shut downs.

Known as illegal bunkering, the theft of crude oil has boomed over the past few years. The stolen oil can be sold to local refiners that cook the crude down into diesel and kerosene for the domestic market, or it can be shipped to international ports for sale.

Those who illegally puncture the pipelines range from technically sophisticated operators—many of whom were once trained by western oil companies—to locals using simple tools to siphon off crude or liquefied gas. The motive is the same: profit.