The foreign ministry has confirmed that three Dutch nationals have been kidnapped in Nigeria along with Nigerian activist Sunny Ofehe, who lives in the Netherlands, Nos television said on Monday afternoon.

Two of three are said to be Erhard Leffers and Marianne Vos, who work for a printing company in Dedemsvaart. The third is documentary maker Jan Dries Groenendijk.

Ofehe and the two printing company staffers produce a magazine about the Niger Delta, Nos said. They were taken by armed militia yesterday afternoon after visiting a clinic in the Delta itself.

Worried

‘I am extremely concerned about my husband,’ Dorothu Faluy Ofehe is quoted as saying by the Nos. ‘I have phoned a contact who is trying to find out more information from the governor of the state of Bayelsa, where the kidnapping took place.’

A Nigerian journalist who was on the boat with the Dutch nationals said the militants screamed at everyone to lie on the ground. ‘They collected our things, mobile phones and cameras,’ he said. Someone then shouted ‘take the white people,’ he told news website Sahara Reporters. Two other people may also be missing.

It is not clear who has taken the Dutch nationals and Ofehe but many kidnappings in the region involve a ransom, Nos said.