Gunmen released Wednesday a British hostage in Nigeria but a Filipina became the latest kidnap victim in the oil-rich Niger Delta where the taking of foreigners shows no sign of letting up.
The woman was abducted at midday from the center of Port Harcourt in Rivers State, the center of Nigeria’s oil industry, by gunmen who immediately switched off her phone and took her to an unknown destination.
“She was probably on her way to the bank. She was taken close to a bank,” Felix Ogbaudu, a state police commissioner, told Agence France-Presse, adding that she was married to a Filipino construction worker.
“As far as I know this is the first-ever female hostage in Nigeria, certainly in the last two years,” a private security advisor told AFP, agreeing with Ogbaudu that the abduction’s timing and location was unusually audacious.
It follows the abduction Tuesday of a Filipino employee of Netco Dietsmann — the Nigerian arm of a Monaco-based oil services company — who was seized from a company car heading for the airport in Owerri, the capital of Imo State.
The man, an instrumentation engineer working for Shell subcontractor Netco Dietsmann, was seized from a company car heading for the airport in Owerri, the Imo State capital.
Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos, citing a report from Philippine Ambassador to Nigeria Masaranga Umpa, identified the kidnapped Filipino as Winston B. Helera, 51, of Quezon City, the INQUIRER.net reported earlier.
The latest two incidents bring to 26 the number of Filipino nationals being held hostage in southern Nigeria. The other 24 were seized from a cargo vessel in Nigerian waters in January.
Their kidnapping prompted Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to slap a temporary ban on her nationals coming to work in Nigeria, where nearly 4,000 Filipinos are already employed.
One British hostage was released earlier Wednesday, but in addition to the 26 Filipinos, two Italians, one American and a Lebanese national are still being held by different armed groups.
A diplomat said the Briton may have been released because his captors were worried he was so ill he might die in their hands.
“He was pretty sick. His health was deteriorating,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
The Briton, who has not been identified, was seized along with an American as the two traveled to work by car in Port Harcourt on January 23.
The diplomat had no news of the American hostage, identified by industry sources at the time of the kidnap as Bill or Billy Graham.
He was also unable to say if the Briton had already been evacuated from southern Nigeria.
The past few weeks have seen a sharp increase in hostage takings in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria. The attacks are carried out by a mixture of separatist groups with a political agenda and criminal gangs lured by the attraction of easy ransom money.
Nine Chinese oil workers from the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) kidnapped January 25 were freed on Sunday.
Nigeria, which derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil, lost more than half a million barrels a day last year to unrest in the Delta. With an INQUIRER.net report