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The travel ban remains in effect, according to Philippines Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, because two other nationals still remain captives of the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta, armed militants who use kidnapping and attacks on oil installations to protest the government's handling of billions of dollars in oil revenue.
"The deployment ban stays because two other Filipinos are still held by their captors. And the incidents of kidnapping in Nigeria is still high, it is not yet safe for our Filipino workers to go there and work," he said Wednesday.
"How long will the ban last? As long as it takes to ensure that our workers are safe," a Filipino official at the country's embassy in Washington told United Press International last week.
The two other Filipinos kidnapped by MEND were abducted in Port Harcourt, the main city of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where several oil firms have operations employing both foreigners and Nigerians.
MEND has threatened all those associated with the oil industry to leave or face a similar fate as the Filipinos and others they've captured or killed over the past 15 months.
Despite the danger and the official ban, Filipinos and others remain drawn to the Niger Delta, Africa's most productive oil reserve with both onshore and offshore drilling producing 2 million barrels per day. A group of Filipino workers bound for jobs in the delta reportedly arrived in the Nigerian city of Kano on Feb. 10, three weeks after Filipino President Gloria Arroyo officially banned all nationals from traveling to Nigeria for work.
Meanwhile, a leading Nigerian newspaper reported Wednesday the 24 Filipino released Tuesday were taken captive by MEND because the militant group allegedly discovered the ship in which they were traveling was carrying arms and munitions to be used to disrupt the April elections. MEND gunmen then abducted the ship's passengers and crew after the militants allegedly "discovered several containers of explosives concealed in other consignments in the cargo ship."
"Ordinarily, (MEND) would have alerted the Nigerian security agency but decided to embark on this action because the Movement has lost confidence in the Nigerian security agents," read a statement signed by MEND leaders Tamuno Godswill and Oyinye Alaebi and sent to Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper.
MEND's distrust of the Nigerian government is based on decades of corruption that has allowed the majority of Nigerians to remain poor to impoverished while a select few grow wealthy on the more than $300 billion worth of oil and gas that's been extracted form the country since the 1970s.
But MEND activity since its inception in late 2005 has cost the country $4.47 billion and counting, according to a recent report.
The violence associated with militancy is responsible for reducing Nigerian oil production by 20 percent, according to a 2006 report. Some officials in Abuja, however, say production is down by as much as 50 percent.
MEND attacks cost the country's oil producers anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 bpd.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has pledged to retake control of the delta to improve oil production while attempting to make inroads and improve the lives of the region's residents. In August, he vowed to crack down on MEND hoping it would demonstrate the government's commitment to tackling the violence. However since then, militants have stepped up attacks and kidnappings and vowed to continue their struggle until their demands were met.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International.
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