A previously unknown group in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta has demanded a 50 million naira ($390,000) ransom for a Lebanese hostage seized on Aug. 16, a local radio reported on Saturday.
The kidnapping of the Lebanese construction worker was one of eight separate abductions in the delta this month. All but three of the 19 people captured have now been released, mostly after the payment of ransoms.
Rhythm FM in the delta’s main city of Port Harcourt reported that a group called the Niger Delta Enlightenment and Expedition Force had written to the State Security Services (SSS) in Delta State demanding the ransom.
The SSS and Delta State authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.
Abductions, mostly of foreign oil workers, have been taking place for years in the delta. Kidnappers have sometimes made political demands but in most cases ransoms have been paid to free the hostages, encouraging the trend.
Government sources say the Rivers State government paid 20 million naira ($156,000) for the release of six foreign oil workers earlier this week, while local activists say oil companies usually also pay to get their staff released.
Nigeria’s two oil workers’ unions, alarmed at the recent rash of hostage takings, are to vote next week on whether to withdraw all their members from the delta, which produces all of the country’s crude oil.
The string of kidnappings follows a series of crippling attacks on the oil industry in the world’s eighth-largest exporter earlier this year by a militant group fighting for greater regional control over the region’s oil wealth. A sixth of Nigeria’s production capacity is currently shut.
Violence in the delta, which has been going on for more than a decade, stems from widespread resentment by residents that their region provides the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth while they have seen few benefits.
But the violence has taken on a momentum of its own, with kidnappings for ransoms, battles for control of a lucrative trade in stolen crude oil and fighting between militias sponsored by rival politicians all part of the equation.