Babakura Fugu's killing comes as Nigeria's weak central government struggles to stop attacks carried out by the feared Boko Haram sect. The group claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 car bombing of the United Nations headquarters that killed 23 people.

Boko Haram later claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to the BBC's Hausa language radio service, a trusted source of news throughout Nigeria's Muslim north. The claim could not immediately be independently verified.

A lone gunman approached Fugu near his home Saturday close to the site of Boko Haram's former main mosque in Maiduguri, a city in the far reaches of northeast Nigeria approaching the Sahara Desert.

The gunman pulled a Kalashnikov rifle from inside the folds of his traditional robes and shot Fugu to death, Borno state police commissioner Simeone Midenda said.

No one else was wounded in the attack and the gunman apparently walked away, Midenda said. The commissioner said no arrests have been made in the attack.

Fugu is a relative of the late Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf, who died in police custody following a 2009 sect riot and security crackdown that left 700 people dead. Fugu and other family members had spoken with former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday in a fledgling peace effort to stop the sect's attacks.