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Nigeria: new kidnapping in the delta of Niger

By on July 5, 2010
In the Gulf of Guinea, the piracy rages again. Twelve foreign sailors were kidnapped, and another one was hurt by bullets during the attack of the BBC Polonia, a German cargo ship which was off the Bonny River, not far from Port-Harcourt. The Nigerian navy spokesman declared that “twelve crew members had been kidnapped. They are Russian, German, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Lettish nationals”.

For the moment, no armed group claimed the hostage taking, but this attack intervenes less than a week after a similar one took place in the same zone. Those events bring the observers to wonder if this is a premise to an outbreak of piracy acts, or rather a simple coincidence.
Because and since few months, the region of the delta of Niger has knew a certain pacification thanks to the launched amnesty process one year ago by the deceased president Umaru Yar’Adua. Thousands of militants handed in their weapons as part of an amnesty deal offered at that time.
His successor, Goodluck Jonathan, certainly announced to resume the program, left unresolved after five months of political uncertainties, but numerous unsatisfied ex-fighters threaten regularly to take back arms, and demand that the region’s residents get more of Nigeria’s oil wealth. A risk that the Nigerian government has to consider, because more than four years of attacks, since 2006, on the pipelines have sharply cut Nigeria’s oil output, allowing Angola to rival the country as Africa’s leading oil producer.

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