By Felix Onuah

ABUJA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Nigeria has taken steps to secure foreign embassies after the United States warned that U.S. and other Western interests were at risk of terrorist attack, the national police chief said on Monday.

The warning, contained in a warden message for American citizens in Nigeria on Friday, gave few details, but said potential targets included official and commercial installations in the capital Abuja and the commercial city of Lagos.

"There is no substantial evidence (of a specific threat), but we know that Sept. 11 is a day that people, especially Americans all over the world, are apprehensive," police chief Mike Okiro told reporters in the capital Abuja.

"Already, we have drawn up plans on how to secure embassies and other venerable areas," he added, without giving details.

A U.S. official in Washington said Friday's advisory was based on "very nonspecific threat information".

Nigerian militant groups frequently attack Western-run oil installations and kidnap workers in the Niger Delta in the remote south, but security analysts said the terrorist threat in Lagos and Abuja was something new.

Africa's top oil producer and most populous country is split roughly equally between Christians mostly in the south and Muslims in the north.

They co-exist peacefully most of the time, but thousands have died in sporadic sectarian clashes since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999 after nearly three decades of army rule.

AlertNet news is provided by