Gunmen in Nigeria have kidnapped the wife of a former oil minister, a local employee of Italian energy firm Agip (ENI.MI), and an electoral official in recent days, security sources said on Wednesday.
The three separate incidents on Monday and Tuesday underline growing insecurity in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where gunmen last week shot dead the 11-year-old daughter of a Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) worker and abducted his 9-year-old son.
Nigeria’s white collar oil workers’ union has threatened an indefinite strike from next week unless the authorities take urgent steps to improve security in the region, home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry.
Foreign companies in sectors ranging from telecoms to construction, as well as the oil industry, have already reduced staffing levels, particularly among expatriates seen at high risk of kidnap, and tightened security measures.
“The wife of former oil minister Edmund Daukoru was abducted last night from a shopping mall in the D-Line area of central Port Harcourt,” a security source working in the oil industry told Reuters. A family member confirmed the abduction.
The day before a Nigerian working for Agip was seized by gunmen in Port Harcourt, the main city in the Niger Delta and the capital of Rivers state, private security sources said.
One source said the kidnappers of the Agip employee had initially demanded a ransom of 30 million naira ($200,000) but had since halved their demand.
A member of the Rivers state electoral commission was also abducted in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, the sources said.
The three kidnappings did not appear to be directly linked.
INCREASINGLY DESPERATE ATTACKS
Abduction has long been part of the strategy of militants who say they are fighting for a fairer share of the natural wealth in the delta. More than 200 foreigners have been seized since early 2006, most released unharmed after a ransom payment.
But security experts say the frequency and brutality of the kidnappings, of both foreigners and Nigerians, appears to be increasing, particularly in Rivers state.
One security source said he expected the situation to deteriorate as the military tries to flush armed gangs out of the delta’s creeks and the criminals become more desperate.
Half a century of oil extraction from the Niger Delta, one of the world’s largest wetlands, has swollen government coffers and boosted the profits of foreign oil firms. But it has left many local villages polluted and impoverished.
Local youths complain they are excluded from the job market, heightening frustration and leaving them open to recruitment by armed gangs, many initially set up by politicians to help rig elections, but now surviving through extortion and kidnapping.
The main militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), called off a five-month-old ceasefire on Saturday, warning of a “sweeping assault” on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
The group, whose attacks over the past three years have cut Nigeria’s oil output by a third, has said kidnapping “high-value” Western European and North American oil workers would continue to be part of its strategy.
It is still holding two British oil workers seized five months ago.