Umaru Dikko, Ex-Nigerian Official

In July 1984, Umaru Dikko, a former Nigerian government official living in exile after a military coup, was kidnapped outside his London estate, packed in a shipping crate and driven to Stansted Airport, to be flown back to Lagos, where he stood accused of embezzlement and other crimes.

The abduction was witnessed by his secretary, who alerted Scotland Yard. The plot was foiled by customs officials, who held up the flight, opened two crates marked “diplomatic baggage” and discovered not only a drug-stupefied Mr. Dikko, but also three of his kidnappers, who were shipping themselves to Africa as well.

The episode provoked a diplomatic crisis and a flood of news media attention to what The New York Times, in a front-page article, called a “Nigerian Drama.”

“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,” Mr. Dikko told the BBC a year later.

Mr. Dikko, who returned to Nigeria in the 1990s, died on July 1 in London, where he was said to be receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness. His death, at either 77 or 78 — biographical sources differ — was confirmed by the Nigerian Consulate in New York.

Mr. Dikko was the minister of transport in the civilian government run by Shehu Shagari, his brother-in-law, from 1979 until the end of 1983, when the Nigerian Army forcibly expelled the administration and installed Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the head of state.

An outspoken critic of the junta, Mr. Dikko fled the country shortly afterward, reportedly dressed as a priest, but continued to advocate an overthrow of the new rulers. The Buhari government accused him of corruption and of stealing millions of dollars from a rice distribution program he oversaw, charges he denied.

Seventeen people were arrested as complicit in the kidnapping. Four men were eventually convicted of the crime and went to prison. One was a Nigerian diplomat and former army officer; the others were Israelis, at least two of whom were alleged to be members of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. The third was a physician who applied the anesthesia and had boxed himself up with Mr. Dikko in order to monitor him during the flight and keep him from dying.

When the customs agents opened the crate and found Mr. Dikko, the anesthetist reportedly said, “Well, gentlemen, what do we do now?”

The governments of Nigeria and Israel denied involvement in the crime, and the four defendants, who confessed, claimed they were mercenaries hired by Nigerian businessmen. But immediately after the abduction, Britain detained airliners bound for Nigeria and vice versa, and relations between Britain and Nigeria, its former colony, were seriously chilled.

“The kidnap caused one of the worst-ever diplomatic crises between Britain and Nigeria,” the historian Max Siollun wrote in The Independent of London in 2012. “The Nigerian high commissioner was declared persona non grata in London, and the head of Nigeria Airways narrowly escaped being arrested by British police. Diplomatic relations between Nigeria and Britain were suspended for two years.”

According to numerous reports, Mr. Dikko was born in Wamba, in central Nigeria, in 1936. The Independent reported that he had studied at the University of London and worked for a time for the BBC. He served as a commissioner in the northern province of Nigeria now known as Kaduna State and was the manager of Mr. Shagari’s presidential campaign.

After his kidnapping, Mr. Dikko went to law school in London and was admitted to the bar. In Nigeria in the 1990s, he once again became a political force. In recent years he was chairman of the disciplinary committee of the People’s Democratic Party, led by President Goodluck Jonathan.

In a statement, Mr. Jonathan said Mr. Dikko’s “significant contributions, especially his lifelong advocacy for stronger political parties, greater discipline within political parties and the supremacy of political parties, have assured him of a place in the annals of Nigeria’s political development.”

A list of Mr. Dikko’s survivors could not be confirmed, but news reports in England and Africa referred to a son, Dr. Bello Dikko, and a brother, Lamido Dikko. The Daily Independent of Lagos said Mr. Dikko “left behind two wives, 11 children and many grandchildren.”