Gunmen who kidnapped a three-year-old British girl in southern Nigeria said they would kill her unless her father takes her place, the girl’s mother told the BBC on Friday.
”They say I can bring my husband to swap with the baby,” Oluchi Hill, a Nigerian national, told the British broadcaster.
Margaret Hill was snatched at gunpoint on Thursday in Port Harcourt in the southern Rivers state as she was being dropped off for school.
Oluchi said the kidnappers had called her and demanded a meeting. They asked for the girl’s father, British expatriate Michael Hill, to take her place.
However, neither she nor police were able to locate the town in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta region where the meeting was supposed to take place.
The kidnappers then threatened to kill the toddler if her father did not come within three hours, Oluchi said, adding that she has had no contact with them since then.
”He wanted to go down for his baby but the police commander told him not to,” she added of her husband.
She told the BBC she had been able to talk to her daughter, who was crying.
About 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta region since the start of 2006. Most have been freed again after a few days or weeks, and often a ransom is paid.
The most high-profile armed group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has described the kidnapping of Margaret Hill as an ”abomination”. — AFP
