Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was arrested in northeast Nigeria on Wednesday morning, was on the way to his homeland, a Nigerian police spokesman told Xinhua.

"He is on the way to Liberia. He was sent by a Nigerian presidential jet," police spokesman Haz Iwendi said by phone.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Liberia (UNMIL) said it's ready to arrest and transfer to the UN-backed special court in Sierra Leone if he sets foot in Liberia.

A spokeswoman for the UNMIL said she had no idea when Taylor will arrive at Monrovia. A senior official of the UN forces told Xinhua that Taylor will be arrested at the Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, which has been placed under heavy security, and sent directly to Freetown.

Earlier, Iwendi said Taylor, who disappeared from his residence in the southeastern Nigerian city of Calabar on Monday night, was arrested at about 7 o'clock (0600 GMT) at the Nigerian-Cameroonian border town, Gamboru Ngala, by immigration and custom officials.

"He (Taylor) was found on a Land Rover, ashen color, jeep with a man (driver) and a woman. He was arrested and sent to the state capital Maiduguri," he added.

The official News Agency of Nigeria quoted Malam Mohammed Bello, a controller of immigration in Borno, as saying that Taylor, in company of his wife and clad in a white traditional flowing gown " Agbada" without a cap, was intercepted while driving the diplomatic jeep with "Ambassador" on its plate number.

"A convoy was escorting the former warlord when they were intercepted, but that the escort escaped arrest, leaving Taylor and his wife," he added.

Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement that President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is due to meet President George W. Bush on Wednesday, had "ordered the immediate repatriation of Charles Taylor to Liberia."

He said the two presidents "will discuss bilateral issues, and issues of security, conflict resolution, developments in Africa, including the disappearance of Charles Taylor from Calabar, his abode for more than two years."

The United States government, which has been pressing for Taylor's handover in the past two years, said on Tuesday it's Nigeria's responsibility to see that Taylor "is conveyed to the special court for Sierra Leone."

The United Nations is also scheduled to hold a meeting later in the day.

Following Taylor's announced disappearance on Tuesday, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo immediately ordered the arrest of all the security personnel deployed to protect him at his residence in Calabar.

Taylor has been living in Calabar since August 2003 when he accepted Nigeria's offer of safe exile as part of a deal, backed by the U.S. government, to end Liberia's 14-year-old civil war that killed about 250,000 people, about eight percent of the west African country's population.

But by then, Taylor had been indicted on 17 counts by the special court in Sierra Leone, for crimes against humanity and war crimes for fueling the civil war there, when he allegedly supported rebels against the Sierra Leonean government in return for "bloody diamonds."

Nigeria, which initially vowed to protect Taylor with all its might, chose to agree to hand him over to a democratically-elected government of Liberia in late 2004, under the pressure of the U.S. government.

At the weekend, Obasanjo told Liberia's new leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that "Liberia is free to take former president Charles Taylor into its custody," but Johnson-Sirleaf wants her predecessor sent directly to the special court.

Meanwhile, Obasanjo dismissed a request from the court to arrest Taylor to prevent his escape. His spokeswoman Oluremi Oyo said that Taylor "is not a prisoner" and free to leave.

Public reaction to Taylor's extradition has been mixed. Many Liberians want him face the war crimes court in Sierra Leone while some, mostly those considered his loyalists, are opposing his handover to the court on grounds that he may not get a fair hearing.

There have also been suspicion threats that his loyalists could cause trouble in Liberia should he be handed over to the court. Some of individuals believed to be his loyalists were picked recently for questioning, but security personnel in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, have reportedly been tight-lipped on the issue.

Source: Xinhua