LAGOS – The speaker of Nigeria's senate has described Libya's leader Moamer Kadhafi as a 'mad man' after he suggested splitting the country between the Christian and Muslim communities to end sectarian violence.

Responding to a point raised by a lawmaker in the upper house of parliament, David Mark said that Kadhafi's comments were hardly worth dignifying with a response.

"With all due respect, why do you want to give a mad man that level of publicity?" Mark was quoted as saying in several local dailies on Thursday.

"A mad man who said the same thing about England ... and he said the same thing about every other country and then you want to give him any prominence at all," said Mark.

"Truly, in my candid opinion, I don't think he deserves our attention."

The immediate past chairman of the African Union (AU), Kadhafi proposed earlier this week that Nigeria should follow the partition model of Pakistan, which was born in 1947 after the Muslim minority of predominantly Hindu India founded their own homeland.

Kadhafi suggested that a Christian homeland in the south could have Lagos as its capital while a Muslim homeland in the north would have Abuja as its principal city.

He said the two communities should peacefully agree to share Nigeria's oil and other natural wealth.

A militant group in the restive oil producing region of the Niger Delta hailed Kadhafi for his suggestion.

"We think this is the best international comment on Nigeria so far and we salute the courage of the brother leader," said the Joint Revolutionary Council in a statement.

Several hundreds of people were killed in the past two weeks in sectarian violence in Nigeria's central Plateau State.

Plateau State, with Jos as its capital, is the de facto buffer between the predominantly Muslim north and the largely Christian and animist south.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is divided almost in the middle between the two faiths.

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