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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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.

LAGOS, Nigeria—Fighting between Christians and Muslims have killed dozens of people and displaced several thousand in the Nigerian city of Jos, the latest in a string of violent episodes that threaten to increase religious friction in Africa’s most-populous country.

Intense clashes erupted Tuesday after fighting in the northern city first broke out Sunday. Witnesses said they heard gunshots at various times Tuesday and saw groups of men with what appeared to be machetes and makeshift weapons.

Sheikh Khalid Aliyu, the local head of the council of Muslim religious leaders, said several dozen dead bodies have been collected for burial but did not have any accurate casualty figures. “The situation is tense,” said Sheikh Aliyu. “A lot of houses are still burning, and the security is not adequate.”

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan deployed federal troops to Jos on Tuesday. Mr. Jonathan is acting in the place of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who has been in Saudi Arabia for the past two months receiving treatment for a heart condition. Nigerian officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the violence or on the government response.

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Diplomatic Sparks Add to Country’s Problems Amid Absence of Its President

ABUJA, Nigeria – The alleged attempt by a Nigerian man to detonate a bomb on a U.S.-bound flight has frayed Nigeria’s diplomatic ties with its number one buyer of oil: the U.S.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe said that the country does not want to alienate its “traditional partners,” but when the U.S. Transportation Security Administration recently included Nigeria among 14 countries of interest — an effective security watch-list — officials and politicians in the West African nation were incensed.

“The goodwill America enjoys here is tremendous,” Foreign Minister Maduekwe said in an interview. “Was there no way of dealing with security concerns without putting that goodwill in jeopardy?”

The move, which followed Nigerian Umar Farouk Adulmutallab’s alleged attempt to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas day, means that Nigerians traveling to the U.S. will face increased security screenings upon arrival. Mr. Abdulmutallab has pleaded innocent to the charges against him.

ABUJA, Nigeria - U.S. Senator John Kerry has invited the father of alleged Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to speak at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jan. 20, but it remains unclear whether he will accept the invitation or not.

In a letter from Sen. Kerry’s office to the Nigerian ambassador to the U.S. dated Jan. 7, seen by Dow Jones Newswires, Dr. Umaru Mutallab is described as acting “in a heroic fashion by alerting U.S. authorities to his concerns about his son’s whereabouts and activities, and by seeing to disrupt what he believed could have been a dangerous situation.”

“We would like to afford [Dr. Mutallab] the opportunity to discuss his experience with his son and to provide his recommendations on the process by which he worked with U.S. authorities,” Sen. Kerry wrote in the letter.

Dr. Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker who helped establish the country’s first Islamic bank, met with U.S. security officials at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, in November to discuss his son’s increasingly radical views.

Dr. Mutallab, “who identified his own son as an extremist and threat to the United States, has an important story to tell and the committee would like to hear from him,” a spokesman for the Foreign Relations Committee said in an emailed statement.

ABUJA, Nigeria — An attack on a crude oil pipeline operated by U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp. marks the latest in a series of political and security setbacks for this embattled west African nation.

On Friday, unknown gunmen attacked Chevron’s Makaraba-Utonana pipeline in Delta State, according to a Chevron spokesman. The attack forced the company to cut its production by 20,000 barrels a day, the Chevron spokesman said in a statement. The statement said that Chevron was “assessing the situation,” and that it’s “committed to the safety and security of its employees and the protection of the environment in all its operations.”

A Nigerian military spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached about the attack.

The attack could unwind an amnesty deal for militants that bound the government and Nigerian militants in a shaky four month peace. In October, thousands of suspected militants turned in their weapons to avoid arrest. During that time, Western oil companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. were able to increase Nigeria’s total oil production to almost 2 million barrels a day from about 1.6 million barrels.

The pipeline assault is the latest blow for Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and a fragile regional power now grappling with an assortment of security challenges.

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LAGOS, Nigeria — Foreign companies, already familiar with corruption and violence in Nigeria, are grappling with a new challenge: an absentee president.

The government of President Umaru Yar’Adua said this week that Nigeria’s leader, undergoing treatment for a heart condition in Saudi Arabia, was responding to treatment, addressing weeks of speculation about his health. “It is only his doctor that can determine or say when he will come back,” Information Minister Dora Akunyili told reporters.

The news left many foreign firms here, including U.S. oil company Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, in limbo as key oil licenses are set to expire.

Mr. Yar’Adua — criticized for a plodding government and nicknamed “Baba Go-Slow” — has never been an easy person to meet, say Nigerian officials and company executives. But his extended trips abroad for medical care in recent months have made presidential audiences even rarer, fueling nervous speculation about who is actually running Nigeria, the world’s eighth-largest oil producer and Africa’s most populous nation.

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