FOUR Nigerian workers with the Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) held hostage by militants have miraculously escaped from their captors.
They were taken hostage at Tebidaba flow station in Bayelsa State.
The four workers who sustained gunshot injuries arrived in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital where most of them reside in the early hours of yesterday.
One of the oil workers who spoke on behalf of his colleagues and pleaded anonymity, disclosed to The Guardian that the heavily armed militants stormed their platform in the early hours of last Thursday.
The workers who were looking frail and still trying to recuperate from their ordeal, said the fear of being killed by the militants who inflicted gunshot wounds on them during the invasion , caused them to opt for an escape.
Their spokesperson said that the fierce-looking militants had vowed not to release any of the NAOC oil workers until the government released Mujaheed Asari-Dokubo and paid them an undisclosed amount of money.
According to him, the militants also threatened to kill the workers if these and other demands were not met.
“The militants woke us up with gunshots. It was the bullet that struck one of us on the skull and the other on the leg. The militants threatened to kill all of us if the company did not meet their demand. It was a grueling experience . The fear of being killed by the militants spurred us to escape. It was by the divine grace of God that we managed to arrive here in Port Harcourt,” he said.
The workers disclosed to The Guardian that medical doctors had extracted the bullets from the leg of one of them shot by the militants.
The Guardian was informed that there were still over 30 oil workers including soldiers guarding the oil facility that were still being held by the militants.
On November 5, 2006, militants suspected to be drawn from youths around the oil facility, attacked it took over 30 workers and soldiers hostage. Agip was forced in November to shut down crude oil production from the Tebidaba flow station when it was invaded by militants and villagers.
The Tebidaba flowstation which produces an average of 34, 000 barrels of oil per day is NAOC satellite facility where over 42,000 barrels are produced from the Ogboinibiri and 8,000 from Clough creek, and crude oil is fed to the Brass tanker terminal.
Fourteen days later, after NAOC had allegedly paid them an undisclosed amount of money, they released all the hostages and vacated the platform but not without looting computers, air conditioners, television sets and personal belongings of workers and military guards.