A Nigerian militant group said on Wednesday it had foiled a plan by Italian oil company Agip to free four foreign hostages who have been held in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta since December 7.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), which wants jailed leaders from the region freed in exchange for the three Italians and one Lebanese, said Agip had paid middlemen to try and get its four workers out.
A Nigerian spokesperson for Agip, a unit of Italy’s Eni, declined to comment.
”[The plan] involved paying 70-million naira ($545 000) to those supposed to be guarding the hostages for the hostages to be guided to a point where a boat was to be stationed to take them out of the creeks,” Mend said in an e-mail to media.
”A middleman brought 70-million naira to one of our camps where the attempt was immediately reported. Needless to say, the money has been confiscated and will be put to better use.”
Mend said such plans endangered the lives of the hostages as their guards had orders to shoot them if any attempt was made to release them without authorisation.
Attacks on oil facilities and abductions of foreign oil workers have plagued the Niger Delta for years, but the violence worsened in 2006 and is expected to escalate further in the build-up to Nigeria’s general elections in April.
Nigeria, a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the world’s eighth-biggest exporter of crude, gets all its oil from the Niger Delta, but the vast, impoverished region of mangrove-lined creeks and swamps has long been neglected by the central and local governments.
Poverty and frustration at an industry that creates few jobs while polluting the environment fuel militancy and crime.
Faceless group
Mend, a faceless group which emerged in late 2005, launched a series of raids on oil facilities last February, which shut down over 500 000 barrels per day of oil output — a fifth of Nigeria’s oil production capacity. That output has yet to resume.
Mend captured dozens of expatriates during a series of sophisticated raids in January and February last year. All were released unharmed on undisclosed terms after up to five weeks.
Kidnappings for ransom are common in the Niger Delta, but after the latest abductions Mend said it did not want money for the four hostages. Instead, it reiterated demands for the release of two jailed leaders from the Niger Delta and compensation by companies to residents for oil spills.
Since the December 7 abductions, Mend has also detonated three car bombs in the delta’s main city, Port Harcourt, prompting oil majors Shell and Total to pull out hundreds of relatives of their expatriate staff.
Mend said on Tuesday that Roberto Dieghi, one of the Italian hostages, was suffering from various ailments and it would allow doctors from the humanitarian organisation Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, to visit him.
The MSF head of mission in Port Harcourt said the group had not been contacted by anyone from Mend.
Mend said on Sunday that it had moved the four hostages after discovering that a local government official had managed to smuggle a mobile phone to them. The militant group said the four would not be allowed any contacts with the outside world until their release. — Reuters