(AFP)Three British contractors and a Colombian colleague have been seized by gunmen in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region. Three British contractors and a Colombian colleague have been seized by gunmen in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region. The men were working for Netco Dietsmann, a Dutch-Nigerian joint venture maintenance company and were travelling their usual daily route to work at a power plant in Afam, east of Port Harcourt.
The Britons were named as John Bennett, Kevin Gray and Martin Phillips and the Colombian as Fabian Sanchez.
“We are working through all available channels to find our colleagues and bring them back to us safely,” a spokeswoman for Dietsmann in The Netherlands said.
A Foreign Office spokesman said they were “urgently investigating” the reports.
The four men are the first foreigners to have been kidnapped in Nigeria’s oil-rich region since three Indian nationals were abducted in Kogi state late last August.
A British man seized earlier that month was later released unharmed after his family paid a ransom.
A series of amnesties and peace processes launched in the Delta region had raised hopes that several years of violence might soon come to an end. More than 95 expatriates have been kidnapped and five have been killed.
But Nigeria is in the midst of a political crisis centred around the absence for more than seven weeks of its president, Umaru Yar’Adua, who has been undergoing treatment for a heart condition in a Saudi hospital.
In October the region’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), declared an open-ended ceasefire to give dialogue with authorities a chance.
But a MEND spokesman, Jomo Gbomo, said “the peace process is dead.” This follows reports at the weekend that MEND was “reviewing its indefinite ceasefire announced on Sunday, October 9, 2009 and will announce its position on or before January 30, 2010″.
