An Italian oil worker who was held hostage for three months by a militant group in Nigeria said on Friday that he sympathised with his former captors.
"I personally think their motives are well-founded - they're not asking for absurd things, only for what is necessary to lead a normal life," said Cosma Russo, who was released on Thursday together with a second Italian, Francesco Arena.
Russo and Arena work for Italian petroleum group Agip, a subsidiary of oil giant Eni.
They were taken hostage last December by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), a rebel group which wants foreign oil groups to leave the oil-rich, southern Nigerian region.
The group want the impoverished local population to have a share of the region's oil profits and say the oil industry must compensate the people for the extensive environmental damage it has caused.
MEND has been waging a two-year campaign of kidnappings and attacks on foreign oil firms in the Niger Delta. Its attacks last year shut down a fifth of Nigerian oil output.
After releasing its two Italian hostages, MEND warned that other foreigners would be seized to replace them.
Russo, 55, said in a TV interview that the MEND militants were "normal kids who come from villages where everything is lacking...I think most of my fellow oil workers would agree with me when I say that these people really do need infrastructure - schools, roads, hospitals".
"However, I would advise MEND to try and obtain its rights by political means, talking to the government and involving it in a peaceful way because no good ever comes from using arms," he said.
Russo said that he and Arena, who landed back in Italy in the early hours of Friday morning, had been treated "very well" by their kidnappers.
Arena, 54, said in interviews on Thursday that their captors took care to give them bottled water to drink and fed them well, cooking them rice and fish when they themselves had almost nothing to eat.
"My only complaint is that they kept us hostage too long - 98 days was too long," he said.
Arena and Russo were seized on December 7 when MEND militants attacked a pumping station in Brass, a small coastal town in the swampy southern state of Bayelsa.
Two other oil workers, Italian Roberto Dieghi, and Lebanese Imad Saliba, were also kidnapped during the raid.
Dieghi, who suffers from hypertension, was released after six weeks while Saliba managed to escape with the help of Agip and the local army on February 21.
Two Italians working for engineering group Impregilo were held hostage for three days there last month by another militant group active in the region.
The Italian foreign ministry has now advised Italians to leave the region.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer and the sixth largest in the world.
MEND argues that the 20-million-strong Niger Delta population has suffered unchecked degradation of their environment due to the pollution produced by the oil industry.
They say that the people have been dispossessed from their lands in favor of foreign oil interests and many have lost the ability to farm and fish.
According to the International Monetary Fund, during the three decades from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, oil generated about $350 billion for Nigeria, whilst the number of Nigerians living in poverty, on less than a dollar a day, rose from 36% to 70%.
However, some observers say that many militants who claim to be fighting to improve the plight of the local population are really little more than oil thieves, bandits or the puppets of corrupt politicians.
ENI STEPS UP SECURITY.
Meanwhile, Eni said it had stepped up security at its oil facilities in the Niger Delta.
Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni, who was at Rome airport to greet Russo and Arena on their return, said that "we have reduced the number of expatriates working in Nigeria and set up new security measures which we think will work".
"Obviously there is still some risk but on the other hand, we have seen that all the big oil firms are behaving like us - nobody has left the Delta," he said.
Eni argues that it also plays a social role in the Delta community, investing in local health, education and infrastructure projects.
"We believe our presence in the country is of help to the local people," the company said recently.
Eni invested almost $100 million in community projects in the Niger Delta between 1998-2006, helping some 290 communities.
