Efforts are underway to establish contacts with gunmen who kidnapped three foreign construction workers in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, and to get the hostages freed, officials said Saturday.
The victims kidnapped in two separate incidents Friday were Dutch, Indian and Lebanese. They were the latest in a string of foreign workers abducted in the volatile region.
“We are making progress in establishing contacts with the abductors of the Indian and Lebanese, knowing the whereabouts of these hostages and eventually getting them released,” a spokesman of Delta State government, Sheddy Ozoene, told AFP.
The Indian and the Lebanese were seized from a construction site at Agbarho in Delta State where they were working, state police commissioner Udom Ekpoudom said.
The Dutchman was kidnapped Friday morning in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil capital, in the southern Rivers State, Rivers police commissioner Felix Ogbaudu told AFP.
Ogbaudu said the man, a security officer, “heard shooting, came out to see what was happening and was immediately seized.”
“We are making efforts to locate the Dutchman and get him freed,” a senior Rivers State government official told AFP.
Industry sources said the men worked for Cetraco, a construction company working on a road in the region.
Major Musa Sagir, a spokesman for a joint military force tasked with policing the Niger Delta, said troops had been deployed to hunt for the kidnappers who seized the Dutchman.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for either of the latest attacks.
The most high-profile of the separatist groups operating in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has abducted dozens of people in the past, said it was not involved this time.
The latest kidnappings bring to five the number of foreigners currently held by armed groups in southern Nigeria.
Two Chinese nationals were abducted on March 17 in the southeastern state of Anambra.
Since the start of this year, about 60 foreigners, most of them linked to the oil industry, have been kidnapped in Nigeria, as many as were abducted during the whole of 2006.
Reduced output due to unrest cost Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, some 4.4 billion dollars last year, according to officials.
European Union election observers deployed to Nigeria for April polls will stay away from the three most volatile states in the oil-rich Niger Delta, the EU’s chief observer said Wednesday.
“We are not able to be in three states — Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa — because there, the environment for international observers is not really conducive,” Max van den Berg told reporters.
Since last year, the three states have accounted for almost all the kidnappings of more than 100 foreigners, killings of about 40 security officers and destruction of oil facilities.