Click to play videoLagos, Nigeria: Six Indians were abducted by protesting steel workers, on Tuesday, in Nigeria's Kogi state, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.
The Indians were working at the Ajaokuta Steel Company, whose employees had been demanding pay hikes. The steel workers also barricaded the main entrance to the firm, aiming to force the company's management to honour a 15 per cent wage raise that had been agreed to, on October 2, 2007.
The whereabouts of the kidnapped Indians are unknown, as yet, said NAN.
Though abduction for ransom is a regular occurrence in oil-rich Nigeria, this labour-related kidnapping is the first of its kind, with kidnappers usually targeting elderly relatives and children of prominent Nigerians.
This incident happened just days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's projected visit to Abuja on Sunday, en route to a summit meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Since 2006, militants and criminal gangs have been taking hostage foreigners, who are mostly oil workers. In the past 18 months, some 200 people have been taken captive.
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