A 3-year-old Nigerian boy has been kidnapped in the oil-producing Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, police said yesterday, four days after a British girl of the same age was released by her kidnappers.
Police spokeswoman Ireju Barasua said the boy was the son of a traditional ruler in the community of Iriebe, on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, the delta's main city. Barasua gave the father's name as Eze Francis Amadi.
Kidnappings for ransom are common in the Niger Delta but until recently it was rare for children to be seized. This is the third child abduction since the start of June.
On Sunday, unknown ransom seekers released 3-year-old Margaret Hill unharmed after four days in captivity. Gunmen had snatched the toddler on July 5 from the car in which she was being driven to school in Port Harcourt.
The girl's family and authorities in Rivers state, where Port Harcourt is located, said no money had been paid.
In June, the 3-year-old son of a member of the Rivers state House of Assembly was also kidnapped. Nigerian newspapers reported that a ransom had been paid to obtain his release.
Child abductions were unheard of until the recent cases, which have caused outrage in Nigeria. President Umaru Yar'Adua said last week that no political or economic grievance could justify the kidnapping of a child.
He was referring to a violent political crisis in the delta, which accounts for all of Nigeria's oil wealth but has suffered neglect and pollution during five decades of oil extraction.
Some rebel groups have kidnapped oil workers and attacked oil facilities in an increasingly violent campaign for "resource control", or local power over oil wealth. But many criminal gangs have used the struggle for resource control as a cover for lucrative activities such as abductions for ransom and "bunkering", or smuggling crude oil stolen from pipelines and barges.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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