Militants in Nigeria’s oil producing southern delta have abducted three soldiers who ventured into a remote area near a major natural gas plant, an army spokesman said yesterday.
The abduction took place on Thursday night in the Soku area
of Bayelsa state, one of the three main oil producing states in
the Niger Delta, a vast maze of mangrove-lined creeks.
“The soldiers left their duty area unauthorised. Nobody
knows for what reason. They were abducted by militants. Efforts
are on to release them,” the army spokesman said.
There is a major natural gas gathering station at Soku which
supplies the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas plant at Bonny and
also some oil production facilities.
Militants, often armed and funded with the proceeds of crude
oil theft, roam the waterways of the delta in speedboats and
many areas are off-limits for security forces who have lost
control of the region.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)
is holding three foreign oil workers hostage in a different part
of the delta. MEND has staged a series of attacks on oil
infrastructures that has cut Nigerian output by a quarter.
It was not immediately clear whether there was any
connection between the MEND kidnappings and the abduction of the
three soldiers.
A senior U.S. government analyst said on Wednesday oil
production in Nigeria, the fifth largest supplier of crude to
the United States, would “hang precariously in the balance” for
the foreseeable future because of government’s lack of control.
Many of the delta’s militant groups, including MEND, say
they are fighting for the people of the delta to gain greater
control of oil resources.
But fighting over genuine grievances is hard to untangle
from turf wars over control of remote areas where crude oil
theft is rife. Authorities often dismiss militants as thieves
but activists say the army and politicians are also on the take.
The poor majority in the delta have seen few benefits from
decades of oil extraction that has yielded billions of dollars
in profits for foreign oil companies and corrupt politicians.
Many in the delta feel cheated of the wealth their lands have
produced and their resentment, combined with mass unemployment
and corruption in government, makes the region a fertile ground
for militancy.