A Briton being held hostage with three other foreign oil workers by separatist rebels in western Nigeria made a second desperate telephone plea for help today as his captors again threatened their execution.
In the chilling phone call to the Reuters news agency, Nigel Watson-Clark, from Bristol, said: “I have got to tell you we are under a lot of pressure here and things aren’t too good.
“We are being moved around continuously... we are not being treated that great... we are not used to this sort of stuff.”
Mr Watson-Clark was kidnapped with an American, a Honduran and a Bulgarian when armed rebels from the indigenous Ijaw tribe attacked an offshore oil platform in the Niger Delta owned by Royal Dutch Shell.
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The kidnappers, from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have demanded greater control over the poverty-stricken region’s energy wealth and the release of two tribal leaders.
The first 48-hour deadline was issued on Tuesday. Today, a man describing himself as the outfit’s ground commander claimed that Patrick Landry, the American hostage, was seriously ill. He said that the others would be killed if he died.
In a phone call broadcast on Sky News, he said: “One of them is sick, badly sick and could give up tonight. If one of them dies, we kill them all.”
The hostages took turns to address their respective governments. Each described worsening conditions in the vast maze of mosquito-plagued mangrove swamps on their ninth day in captivity.
Mr Landry said: “We are in bad shape here, we really are. You need to get over to the American embassy, somebody, and try to get this resolved. Meet these people’s demands.
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“We are not military, we came here to work. We’re not Nigerians. We didn’t come over here to get into the middle of this, so please, please, please try to help us,” he said.
MEND, a previously unknown rebel group, has staged a series of major attacks on Nigeria’s oil pipelines, platforms and workers in the past month, leading to a 10 per cent reduction - equivalent to 210,000 barrels a day - in the output of the world’s eighth biggest producer.
The Government today briefed domestic newspapers that it was taking a tactical and peaceful approach in an attempt to persuade the hostage-takers to release the men. Goodluck Jonathan, the appropriately-named Governor of Bayelsa state, has been appointed chairman of a committee to oversee the response.
Some locals, meanwhile, told reporters that villages had been evacuated as firefights raged through the Delta.
The deepening crisis in Nigeria, combined with the impasse with Iran and Osama bin Laden’s renewed radio threats to attack America, have pushed the price of oil to a four-month high of $67.45.
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Although Shell has evacuted some 500 workers from the Benisede flowstation, production at other major plants in the Delta has so far been unaffected. British Gas defied security fears to buy a 45 per cent stake in Block 332, an oil and gas facility 60 miles south-east of Lagos.
Today, however, oil unions warned that they would withdraw their workers if security worsens. The warning came as MEND issued a statement by email threatening to escalate its attacks.
It said: “To demonstrate our disregard for the Nigerian military presence in the Niger Delta, we will carry out a series of very significant attacks very shortly.”
The group said that two jailed Ijaw leaders, militant Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and former Bayelsa state governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, were the only qualified mediators for talks with the government.
Alamieyeseigha was impeached last month for money-laundering after escaping arrest in Britain. He now faces criminal charges as part of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s divisive clampdown on black market oil trading in the region.
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Asari, who led a bloody militant rebellion in the Delta in 2004, is on trial for treason.