Afolayan was not in the car during last week's attack, they said, but the ambush has fuelled already feverish concerns about a spate of high-profile armed attacks which has rocked Nigeria ahead of this month's local elections.

"The driver was returning from an official assignment in Ikeja when he ran into a gang of robbers who shot him dead," navy spokesman Captain Sinefi Hungiapuko told AFP.

He said the unidentified gunman struck on Friday evening as the car mounted the Third Mainland Bridge, which brings traffic across a lagoon from the Ikeja administrative district of mainland Lagos to the city centre.

Police spokesman Emmanuel Ighodalo said the gunmen were thought to be armed robbers, rather than would-be assassins, and that a manhunt had been launched.

"Our men are on the trail of the robbers who killed the naval rating last week. The man was shot dead at close range while returning in his boss's car from an engagement somewhere in Ikeja," he said.

Confirmation of the attack came after President Olusegun Obasanjo held an emergency meting with police chiefs to launch a nationwide crackdown on armed banditry and political violence after a string of killings and attacks.

Last week three people, including an electoral commissioner, were shot dead in the central state of Kogi. Several ruling party members were arrested after the murders, which appear to have been linked to a local political feud.

Last month two people died in an attack on the convoy of Benue State Governor George Akume, and earlier in the year a prominent ruling party official was gunned down as was driving through the Niger Delta.

Meanwhile, mob violence has continued in and around the port of Warri, a centre of the oil industry. A weekend gunbattle between soldiers and an armed gang in the city left between five and 20 people dead.

Nigeria will hold elections in in 774 local government areas on March 24 and fears are running hight that dozens of simmering local disputes could boil over into bloodshed.

WAR.WIRE