Nigeria’s white-collar oil workers have said they will embark on an indefinite strike starting Monday to protest the worsening abduction of their members and their relations in the restive Niger Delta oil region.
”The strike is a national directive,” said the chairperson of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Mrs. Preye Grace Olowu, adding that it would not be restricted to the Niger Delta.
“Three of our members are held hostage. The wife of one of our members was kidnapped in August last year and up till date, nobody knows her whereabouts. We cannot continue work under this condition,” the local media quoted her as saying on Saturday.
Oil workers and their relations have been worst hit by the wave of kidnappings that has seen over 200 people abducted in the past year.
The government blames the abductions on criminal groups seeking to extort money in form of ransom from affluent people and organisations.
In the latest of such abductions, the 9-year-old son of an oil worker was abducted and his 11-year-old sister shot dead by gunmen who accosted them as they were being ferried to school in the main oil city of Port Harcourt last week.
The boy was freed unharmed on Thursday, while the body of the little girl is the morgue awaiting burial.
Also, the wife of former energy minister Edmund Daukoru has just been released after spending several days in captivity.
The oil region’s largest militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), claimed on Saturday that the ex-minister paid a ransom of US$2.5 million to secure his wife’s freedom, but the police said they could not confirm or deny the claim.