Kidnappers Friday released the three-year-old son of a lawmaker who had been abducted in southern Nigeria’s Rivers State, after receiving 13 million naira (102,000 dollars) ransom, officials said.
“The child has been released unharmed this morning (Friday) around 10 am (0900GMT),” Charles Befi Winley, deputy speaker of Rivers state house of Assembly, told AFP by phone from Port Harcourt.
Winley said the identity of the kidnappers who, he said, demanded an initial ransom of 20 million naira remained unknown.
The boy, son of Linda Somiari, a woman member of the Rivers State assembly, was snatched from his school in Port Harcourt, the state capital on Tuesday.
Port Harcourt is the capital of Nigeria’s oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta where there has been an upsurge in kidnappings of local and foreign workers since the beginning of 2006.
Around 200 expatriates have been seized but most have been released unharmed after a few days or a few weeks, often after payment of ransom.
The abductors or attackers mainly belong to well-organised militant groups calling for a greater share of the oil wealth for the provinces where oil is found. The bulk of the revenues go to the federal government.
These attacks, coupled with acts of vandalism and sabotage, have cost Nigeria — the world’s sixth largest oil exporter — dear, translating into an annual revenue loss of 4.4 billion dollars (3.2 billion euros).