Foreign contractors working in Nigeria’s oil-rich delta region face a soaring threat of kidnapping as the country heads towards elections.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), an armed group which began a wave of abductions last year, has now threatened new attacks.
“There will be increased bombings, attacks on installation, pipelines and oil company workers,” said Mend’s spokesman, who operates under the pseudonym Jomo Gbomo and communicates with the outside world only by email.
“Oil exports will either be halted or greatly diminished this year, without a drastic change in government policy towards the Niger Delta.”
Mend has seized 22 oil workers in the past 12 months, targeted oil companies with car bombs and carried out a daring raid on a pumping platform 40 miles offshore, kidnapping four contractors including a Briton.
It says its offensive, which shut down 20 per cent of Nigeria’s oil production and helped push world crude prices past $72 a barrel, will continue past the presidential and state governor polls set for April 19.
However, it denies being encouraged by politicians to generate unrest. “We are unconcerned with the fraudulent electoral process in Nigeria,” said Gbomo.
Anarchy in the Niger Delta could spell disaster for world oil supplies. Almost a fifth of crude consumed in the United States comes from Nigeria.
Tensions have risen further since a recent split within the militants which has led a jumble of splinter factions to begin copycat kidnappings.
“These are local thugs who kidnap only for the money, not for ideology,” said Oronto Douglas, a human rights lawyer based in Port Harcourt.
“The graph of conflict is getting steeper. At every stage the attacks are more sophisticated and the money they are demanding is growing.”
Rumours swirl around the polluted and traffic-choked delta city of Port Harcourt that the factions are pocketing �450,000 per kidnap victim.
The major oil companies deny handing over a penny. But the whispers of huge payouts are enough to attract the attention of ever-growing numbers of poor, angry � and armed � young men.
“The elections give politicians the chance to give these guys more weapons to ‘encourage’ voters,” said a well-connected local source. “And with those guns they can go on a kidnapping spree.”
During both the 1999 and 2003 polls, armed militias bankrolled by candidates roamed the delta, human rights groups have reported.
This swampy corner of Africa’s most populous country pumps �28 billion into the exchequer, 80 per cent of its revenue. But very little trickles down to the 30 million Nigerians living here, leaving them with a collapsing infrastructure, few schools or clinics and devastating environmental ruin.
“We are all left behind while the rest of Nigeria lives off our oil,” said George Omubo, a 30-year-old unemployed graduate.
More oil cash has been looted from Nigeria than the total Western aid to Africa between 1960 and 1999, allowing state officials to keep fleets of four-wheel-drive cars and to run private jets.
“If the rest of the world had shown concerted interest before oil production was affected, this violence could definitely have been averted,” said Mr Douglas. “But now it is too late for talk. The Niger Delta is poised to blow up.”