Government yesterday said contact had been made between the Maltese oil worker kidnapped in Nigeria and his employer, Lonestar.
George Scerri, 62 from Birkirkara, was kidnapped on Friday 23 May while driving to an oil rig with a Pakistani colleague.
Government said this was the first confirmation that Scerri was still alive.
Foreign Minister Tonio Borg is in direct contact with the Nigerian government and Lonestar, as efforts continue to secure the Maltese hostage’s release. Scerri’s family were being updated with all developments in the case.
The Niger Delta is a region notorious for kidnappings of foreign oil workers. Scerri has been a tool pusher with Lonestar for the past eight years.
A Nigerian website claims the attack occurred at 12.30pm outside Omuku town, where a convoy transporting Scerri and his colleague was waylaid by armed militiamen off the East-West road between Ikioi and Obagi. An eyewitness account claimed the “kidnappers armed with automatic weapons overcame the security men attached to the expatriates.”
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Kidnapping: Nigeria’s ‘fastest growing industry’
Abduction of foreign oil workers has become a commonplace occurrence in the Niger Delta: so much so, that a local website run by expats, “Oyibos Online”, has produced and marketed T-shirts with the slogan “Kidnapping: Nigeria’s fastest growing industry.”
Nigeria is itself Africa’s largest oil producing nation, and the eleventh largest in the world, averaging 2.5 million barrels per day. According to ASI Global Response – an American firm specialising in kidnap negotiations, among other services – Nigeria is also the country with the second highest risk of kidnapping for foreign workers after Iraq.
Last year there were over 150 cases of foreigners abducted by armed militants towards the south of the country, where the bulk of the country’s oil wells is concentrated. Individual oil companies have consistently denied paying ransoms for the release of their kidnapped workers; but by and large most cases end in release, with the victims claiming to have been treated reasonably well. Individual ransom demands have been known to reach up to €3 million.
While George Scerri’s abductors are as yet unidentified, the vast majority of last year’s kidnappings have been attributed to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). Ostensibly a political formation, MEND seeks to redress the country’s wealth imbalance by demanding that some of its oil revenue is re-invested in the Niger Delta region itself. But while the abductions began as an exercise in political leverage, in recent years many kidnappings are believed to be motivated for purely financial gain.
The feeling on the ground in Nigeria is very much one of a widespread extortion racket run by a growing network of underground criminal organisations. So much so that MEND itself is often forced to publicly dissociate itself from abduction cases, such as last year’s kidnapping of a three-year-old British girl.
It is not yet known if the abduction of George Scerri was politically motivated or a case of organised crime.