CANADIAN, U.S. HOSTAGES SAID TO BE IN GOOD SHAPE.
Bandits blamed, ransom asked for group of four
Two Canadians and two Americans being held hostage in Nigeria are together and in “good spirits,” a state police official said Thursday, confirming that their captors had issued a ransom demand.
Agyole Abbeh, the commissioner of police in the state of Kaduna, where the ambush occurred, told the National Post by phone that police were working with the Nigerian army, security specialists, the hostages’ respective governments, and their employers to secure their release.
He said he believed the hostages were being held in the general region of where the ambush took place Tuesday evening along a highway that connects the town of Kafanchan with the capital, Abuja.
Abbeh said he was confident the quartet would eventually be let go, characterizing their captors as “armed bandits” who “just want money.” He said they are not believed to be affiliated with the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.
He did not have specific details of the ransom demand.
Earlier in the day, Istifanus Bako, a Nigeria police spokesman in Abuja, told the National Post he, too, believed the hostages would be safely released “for sure.”
A spokesman for Global Affairs Canada did not have any additional information Thursday, in keeping with the department’s policy of maintaining a “low profile” in such situations.
According to a declassified briefing note previously obtained by the National Post, the government deliberately refrains from making too many public statements during overseas hostage incidents so as to “minimize the threat to the life of the hostage.”
The same document explicitly states that when it comes to hostage-takings by terrorist groups, the “Government of Canada will not pay ransoms nor will it make any substantive concessions, including major policy changes, exchange of prisoners, or immunity from prosecution.”
The document does not say whether private entities, such as family members or employers, are forbidden from paying ransoms.
Andrew Ellis, president of Ellis Global Risk Assessment and a former assistant director at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said there may be a bit more flexibility on the no-ransom policy when dealing with non-terrorist entities.
The Trudeau government previously came under criticism for the way it handled a high-profile hostage-forransom case in the Philippines that saw two Canadians, John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, executed in 2016 by members of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group.
This week’s ambush in Nigeria happened Tuesday night in an isolated area with few witnesses, Abbeh said. Gunmen confronted the group as they were travelling south to the capital, shooting and killing two officers who were providing security for the foreigners.
Bako said it’s not uncommon for kidnappers to negotiate with authorities from a separate location from the hostages.
The hostages are investors who were carrying out inspections of solar power projects, Abbeh said. Authorities have not disclosed the identities of the hostages or the companies they work for.
The northern part of Nigeria is considered an ideal spot for developing renewable energy infrastructure, particularly solar projects, because of the abundance of solar radiation and the region’s distance from other sources of power.
But those doing business in the region are advised to make sure they have security escorts, especially when travelling along the road from Kaduna to Abuja.
Last year, two German archeologists were seized at gunpoint and later freed unharmed by their kidnappers.
The Canadian government website urges travellers to avoid all nonessential travel to Nigeria as “the security situation throughout the country is unpredictable and there is a significant risk of terrorism, crime, inter-communal clashes, armed attacks and kidnappings.”
THE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE CHARACTERIZED THE CAPTORS AS ‘ARMED BANDITS’ WHO ‘JUST WANT MONEY.’