Nigeria

Hostage takers in Nigeria released nine Chinese oil-worker captives, officials said on Sunday, amid rising violence in Africa’s biggest petroleum producer. More than two dozen other foreigners were still being held in Nigeria’s southern oil-pumping region, after weeks of stepped-up attacks in the restive region.

Bird flu has claimed its first human victim in Africa’s most-populous nation, killing a young Nigerian woman due to graduate from university and be married this year, officials and the victim’s fiancé said. An outbreak of H5N1 bird flu hit Nigeria last year, but no human infections had been reported until Wednesday.

Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Olusegun Obasanjo of buying arms to suppress unrest in the oil-rich Niger Delta rather than pacifying the region with development, his aides said on Wednesday. "This government approved $2-billion, not to develop the delta, but to buy arms to suppress the people of the region," Abubakar was quoted as saying.

Nigerian separatist militants released 125 inmates when they stormed a police station in Port Harcourt in an attack to free their leader that claimed at least two lives, police said on Tuesday. "Heavily armed men raided our station and freed 125 inmates" during Sunday’s raid, state police spokesperson Ireju Barasua said.

Nigerian gunmen have abducted two or three Chinese oil workers in the southern delta state of Bayelsa, police said on Thursday. The men were working for the Chinese National Petroleum Company when they were seized by the gunmen, who also looted the company’s office, police said.

Nine South Korean pipeline workers kidnapped in Nigeria’s restive southern oil region have been released, officials said. The nine Koreans and one Nigerian kidnapped on Wednesday were freed on Friday with the help of an unarmed neighbourhood-watch group and no ransom was paid, a Bayelsa state spokesperson said.

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. Shortly after the announcement, the Nigerian military said one of its lieutenants had been abducted in the region.

Four foreign oil workers held hostage by armed separatists in Nigeria’s Niger delta region will be allowed no further contact with the outside world, the group holding them said on Saturday. "All four hostages have been relocated and will not be permitted to communicate with the outside world until their eventual release," the Movement for the Emanicipation of the Niger Delta said.

Nigerians traded recriminations on Wednesday over who was to blame for the deaths of hundreds of people burned alive in a fuel explosion in the heart of Lagos, the country’s teeming economic capital. Many blamed the government for allowing poverty to reach such depths in Africa’s top oil producing nation that ordinary people were ready to risk their lives for a bucket of petrol.

Hundreds of people were burned alive on Tuesday when fuel spilling from a vandalised pipeline exploded in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, emergency workers said. Crowds of local residents went to scoop up the petrol in plastic containers after an armed gang punctured the underground pipeline overnight to siphon fuel into road tankers.

An armed separatist group in southern Nigeria that is holding four foreign oil workers hostage said on Sunday that it will not be swayed by their pleas for release and indicted Italian oil firm Agip for allegedly attempting to pay a ransom. The hostages have called on their respective home governments to help in securing their release.

The Nigerian army has enlisted 500 recruits from the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta as part of measures to douse restiveness in the region, state-run media said on Wednesday. The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Minister of State for Defence Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi as saying that the recruitment was a response to growing unemployment in the region.