Nigerian armed separatists holding four foreign oil workers on Sunday threatened more attacks on oil facilities, while authorities sought five Chinese telecommunications workers also kidnapped in the Niger Delta.
”We are resuming with our attacks this month and may even take more hostages,” a spokesperson for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) warned in an email message to Agence France-Presse.
Shortly after the announcement, the Nigerian military said one of its lieutenants had been abducted in the region, but Mend denied responsibility for the kidnapping.
The spokesperson for the group, which is holding three Italians and a Lebanese oil worker kidnapped on December 7 in the oil-rich southern Bayelsa state, insisted that the movement’s political demands be met.
”If it takes us one year to get what we want, we will keep them and others,” the statement said, but the group also denied any involvement in Friday’s seizure of the five Chinese workers in Rivers state.
Mend has demanded that Nigerian authorities release former Bayelsa state governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, jailed on corruption charges, as well as separatist leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and other detainees from the region.
The group also wants a larger share for southern Nigerians in oil revenues, which account for almost all the country’s foreign-exchange income, along with compensation for communities affected by oil pollution.
The Italians — Roberto Dieghi, Cosma Russo and Francesco Arena — were kidnapped with Lebanese Imad Saliba when Mend attacked an oil installation owned by Italy’s Agip oil firm in Brass, in Bayelsa state.
Chinese workers
The new Mend threat came as government officials said they had stepped up efforts to locate the Chinese workers, who were seized two days earlier by an unidentified armed group from a local community in southern Rivers state.
Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnap, which led to a formal protest to the authorities in Abuja from the Chinese government.
Leaders and prominent citizens in the community at Emohua where the Chinese were seized have promised to help in efforts to secure their release, Rivers state police boss Felix Ogbaudu said, according to the Sunday Guardian newspaper.
”There has been no information yet about the whereabouts of the hostages, but the chairman of the local government area, Emeka Woke, has promised to wade into the matter since it is his area,” Ogbaudu was quoted as saying. ”We are hoping that we will reach them [hostages] shortly.”
Woke told the newspaper that there was progress in resolving the problem, adding that all necessary contacts were being made to secure the release of the Chinese hostages.
A team of senior officials from the Chinese embassy is in Rivers state as part of efforts to rescue the hostages, an embassy spokesperson has said.
At least 37 Nigerian troops and dozens of Nigerian oil workers were killed by the militants last year, while more than 60 foreigners, mostly oil workers, were kidnapped and, except for the four employees held by Mend, later released.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, which derives more than 95% of its foreign-exchange earnings from oil, lost more than half a million barrels a day last year due to unrest in the Niger Delta, President Olusegun Obasanjo said late last month. — Sapa-AFP