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ABUJA - A 3-year-old British girl has been freed four days after being kidnapped in Nigeria, and her mother said the toddler was in good health except for mosquito bites.
Unknown gunmen had snatched Margaret Hill from the car in which she was being driven to school while it was stuck in traffic on Thursday morning in Port Harcourt in the southern oil-producing Niger Delta.
"I am very very happy," said Oluchi Hill, the girl's mother, speaking from the headquarters of the State Security Services (SSS) in Port Harcourt, where she was reunited with her daughter.
"She is OK but I want to proceed with her to hospital because she has a lot of mosquito bites," said Hill. The Niger Delta is a vast malarial wetland.
Margaret Hill could be heard laughing in the background while her mother was on the phone to Reuters. The toddler was playing with a Rivers State official who called her "jungle girl".
Emma Okah, a spokesman for Rivers State, said no ransom had been paid to secure the girl's release. Her mother had said on Friday the kidnappers had called demanding money.
Okah said the release had taken place in the town of Ogbakiri in a rural area of Rivers. The kidnappers released the girl at an agreed location where SSS agents picked her up. The kidnappers got away and no arrests were made.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he was delighted to hear of the toddler's release.
"I am grateful to the Nigerian authorities for all their help and I hope the perpetrators will swiftly be brought to justice," he said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office in London.
Margaret Hill has a British father and Nigerian mother.
Oluchi Hill said on Friday the kidnappers had called her, first demanding a swap between the daughter and the father, and later demanding a ransom. The amount demanded was unclear. The kidnappers had threatened to kill the girl.
Abductions for ransom are common in the Niger Delta, although it is rare for children to be targeted.
The abduction of the toddler caused outrage in Nigeria, including among militant groups in the Niger Delta who said it undermined their campaign for "resource control", or local power over oil revenues.
The Niger Delta is home to the eighth-biggest oil industry in the world. It is a vast maze of mangrove-lined rivers and creeks, polluted by five decades of oil extraction and neglected to the point that there are few basic services.
About 200 expatriates have been abducted in the region since the start of 2006, of whom at least 14 are still being held by different armed groups.
Some of the kidnappings are carried out by militants seeking to press their demands for "resource control", but the vast majority of abductions are motivated by money.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has been behind most of the attacks on oil facilities that have cut Nigeria's output by over 20 per cent, condemned the abduction of Margaret Hill and vowed to punish the kidnappers.
- REUTERS
