On 25 July 2007, gunmen ferried in speedboats kidnapped two oil engineers of Damas Oil and Marine Services, one from the Philippines and one Nigerian, in Port-Harcourt, the Rivers state capital.
The incessant kidnapping of oil workers in the oil rich Niger Delta was a disturbing security problem in Nigeria at the time. There were four cases of kidnapping of oil workers in the month of July of 2007 alone.
The Niger Delta militants used kidnapping as a bait or pressure tactic to press home their demands from Nigerian government to address the grievances of oil pollution in their communities.
The victims, at the initial stage, were expatriates oil workers. They were abducted and political demands made for their release. In the second stage of the problem’s evolution, the militants collected ransoms for releasing their captives and the money used to finance their insurgency against the Nigerian state. The third stage of the evolution was when it was hijacked by some criminal elements that turned it to a form of extortionate terrorism now difficult to manage. At this stage, the oil workers, members of their families, rich community members and politicians were kidnapped and ransoms taken before releasing them.
The problem soon extended to the other parts of the country from the Niger Delta because of the poor way this form of violent extremism was managed by the Nigerian government. Not even the amnesty granted the Niger Delta militants in 2009 and in several other parts of Nigeria (where kidnapping now takes place) has been good enough to stop what now appears to be new form of career criminality.
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