Alhaji Umaru Dikko, Nigerian politician famously rescued by the Metropolitan Police from been repatriated to Nigeria from UK in a crate died Tuesday morning in London, United Kingdom, after suffering a stroke.

Dikko was unarguably one of the most powerful and colourful politicians in the democratic regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, where he served as Minister as Minister of Transport. One of his most notable infamous quotes was when he inferred that Nigerians were not that poor because they were yet to pick rubbish to eat.

Alhaji Dikko died age 78.

The foiled Nigerian kidnap plot

In London in 1984, a team of Nigerians and Israelis attempted to kidnap and repatriate the exiled former Nigerian minister Umaru Dikko. Mr Dikko, who had fled Nigeria after a military coup, was accused of stealing $1bn (£625m) of government money.

The plot was foiled by a young British customs officer, Charles David Morrow, who has now told the BBC World Service Witness programme what happened.

On a summer’s day, Mr Dikko walked out of his front door in an upmarket neighbourhood of Bayswater in London. Within seconds he had been grabbed by two men and bundled into the back of a transit van.

“I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs,” he told the BBC a year later.

Mr Dikko had been minister for transport in the government of Shehu Shagari until it was overthrown by the military at the end of 1983. He fled to London accused by Nigeria’s new rulers of embezzlement – a charge he has always denied.

Labelled “Nigeria’s most wanted man”, a plot was hatched to get both him and the money back.

The extraordinary plan was to kidnap Mr Dikko, drug him, stick him into a specially made crate and put him on a plane back to Nigeria – alive.

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