Seven expatriate oil workers abducted in Nigeria are in good health and their kidnappers have demanded a ransom, a diplomat said on Thursday.
Fighting between militants and troops in a different part of the Niger Delta subsided overnight but Royal Dutch Shell suspended supply convoys in some creeks after militants said they killed 17 soldiers in gun battles on Wednesday.
“They’ve been in contact so we know they’re OK,” said a diplomat from one of the countries whose nationals were kidnapped on Tuesday night from a residential compound for contractors to ExxonMobil in Akwa Ibom state.
“There has been a demand for a ransom. We’re at that stage where the state government is moving toward negotiations. They will take the lead as in all previous cases,” he added.
The kidnapped men are four Britons, one Romanian, one Malaysian and one Indonesian. Kidnappings for ransom are common in the Niger Delta and hostages are usually released unharmed after money changes hands.
Violence in the delta is rooted in poverty, corruption and lawlessness. Most inhabitants have seen few benefits from five decades of oil extraction that has damaged their environment.
Resentment toward the oil industry breeds militancy, but the struggle for control of a lucrative oil smuggling business and the lure of ransoms have also contributed to the violence. The lines between militancy, crime and business are blurred.
Oil workers’ union PENGASSAN, which last month staged a strike over insecurity in the delta, accused corrupt officials of fuelling the crisis.
“LUCRATIVE BUSINESS”
“These kidnappers can’t be doing it on their own, without support from a powerful cabal that cuts across state and local governments and even the armed forces,” Lumumba Okugbawa, acting secretary general of PENGASSAN, told Reuters by telephone.
“It’s a lucrative business, these ransoms. (Government officials) establish contact with the kidnappers, they negotiate with them, yet no one is ever caught. The kidnappers always get off scot-free,” he said.
After a relatively quiet September, violence has flared up this week in the delta, which accounts for all crude output from the world’s eighth-biggest exporter. A fifth of production capacity is already shut down following a wave of militant attacks in February.
Late on Wednesday, militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said they killed 17 soldiers in two separate gun battles in Rivers state.
“We’re not shutting down anything for the time being, but there is no transport in certain areas for now,” said a source at Shell, whose facilities were one of the militant’s targets.
The MEND, who were behind the devastating raids in February, have threatened to stage a series of attacks against strategic oil installations in Rivers state over the next few days. They say they have moved 500 fighters into the state to protect communities against reprisals by the military.
The spiral of violence was set off when about 70 militants attacked a convoy of boats supplying Shell oilfields on Monday, killing at least three soldiers. They stole a barge of diesel and abducted 25 Shell contractors who have now all been freed.