Nigerian Police Arrest Four Suspects in Journalists' Kidnapping in Abia

Nigerian police arrested four people suspected of involvement in the abduction of four journalists for ransom, police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said.

“We have four persons in custody in respect of this offence,” he said phone from the capital, Abuja, today. “We are also in hot pursuit of other fleeing members of the gang and we shall catch up with them.”

The four officials of the Nigerian Union of Journalists were rescued by police from the bush yesterday, where they were taken by abductors who seized them on July 12 in the southeastern state of Abia.

An upsurge of violent attacks since 2006 against foreign oil workers in the Niger River delta is now increasingly being directed at other Nigerians, according to the police.

Unrest in the southern delta region, home to Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, cut Nigeria’s oil output by more than 28 percent between 2006 and 2009, when thousands of militants disarmed to accept a government amnesty offer.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and the fifth- biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Tamuno in Port Harcourt via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

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