Two Nigerians abducted along with three Dutch nationals in the country's oil-rich creek region have been freed, although there has not yet been any word regarding the fate of the foreigners.
"I appeal to the kidnappers to please release the other members of my team," Sunny Ofehe, a Nigerian activist based in the Netherlands, said in Tuesday statements to the media.
He said that he and another Nigerian – named Femi Soewu – had been kidnapped along with three Dutch nationals in the Letugbene community of Ekeremor local council area of Bayelsa, an oil-rich state in the Niger Delta.
Ofehe identified the abducted Dutch nationals as Erhard Leffers, the owner of the Dutch publishing company Gerrits & Leffers; Marianne Vos, a writer with the firm; and Jandries Groenendijk, a documentary filmmaker.
"Not long after we were bade farewell by the [local] monarch, the armed gang – suddenly, from nowhere – rounded up our boats and asked everyone to lie face down," he recalled.
"[The militants] screamed, 'We want the white men.' Everyone was virtually panic-stricken and terrified," Ofehe added.
He said the masked militants then dragged out the white people and seized all the valuables in the boats.
"Just when we thought they had gone, another boat conveying more armed men who were firing into the air ordered me and the other Nigerian – Femi from Holland – into the boat and sped off chanting war songs," Ofehe recounted.
He said they were never kept in the same location as the Dutch nationals, adding that the kidnappers eventually abandoned them in another unknown community.
Police spokesman Alex Akhigbe told AA on Tuesday afternoon that there was "no clue yet about where they were taken to; neither has anyone contacted the community to claim responsibility."
But suspicions have fallen on the pocket of fighters still operating as criminal gangs in the creek region, five years after the government offered an amnesty to the so-called "oil militants."
Kidnapping is rampant in Nigeria's Delta region – and lately in the southeastern region, as well – with kidnappers demanding hefty ransoms in return for their captive victims.
Some have also accused Boko Haram militants in the country's restive northeast of involvement in the kidnapping phenomenon.
By Rafiu Ajakaye
englishnews@aa.com.tr
