Four young Nigerian men serving as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were taken hostage near Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on Saturday, and top leaders in Salt Lake City are expressing gratitude for the local leaders who are working to free them.
Elder M. Russell Ballard of the church's Council of the Twelve told the Deseret Morning News on Tuesday night that the church is grateful for the "heroics of the local Nigerian membership of the church — the leaders there," who are working with local tribal chiefs. The native leaders are "very disturbed that they would take hostage men of religion," Elder Ballard said. "This is the first time they've done anything like that with a religious group.
"We just can't say how much we appreciate the empathy, love, prayers and concern of the local Nigerian people. We hope that their efforts will bring those four missionaries back into their area safely."
Elder Quentin L. Cook, executive director of the church's Missionary Department, said a local leader, Bishop Sancho, has been instrumental in working with local tribal leaders to help secure the missionaries' release, as has Elder Adesina J. Olukanni, second counselor in the Africa West Area Presidency.
Elder Ballard said Bishop Sancho has "had one contact with the missionaries" since their abduction, but he was not able to provide details of the conversation. He said the four missionaries — ages 19 to 21 — were together in their apartment Saturday morning in the village of Emohua when they were taken hostage.
"We don't know how they were taken," Elder Cook said when asked if they had been abducted at gunpoint. "The neighbors are the ones that reported it to their African leaders," he said.
"That's one of the problems," Elder Ballard said. "There are many things we're not sure of with exact answers at this stage of the game. We're trying to sort out and understand it ourselves. Nigeria is a long ways from Salt Lake City."
While five older couples serving as missionaries in the area were relocated in January, church members in that area of Nigeria are "quite used to seeing the matter of hostage taking, primarily through the oil employees," Elder Ballard said. "I think the members are very concerned and rallying around and praying for the missionaries like we are here."
The Associated Press reported Monday that three Croatian workers were kidnapped late Sunday in Port Harcourt, the latest in a long string of abductions in Nigeria's "unruly southern oil region," the wire service said. Attacks on oil infrastructure and workers have escalated in the past year, as has violence in the weeks leading up to April elections.
Hostage-takers released an American oil worker late Saturday, the AP said, but at least eight foreigners and scores of locals have been abducted during unrest there in recent months.
Abductions for ransom have become common in the poverty-stricken area, the report said, adding that hostages are "generally released unharmed," though some casualties result from gun battles between hostage takers and military forces.
Elder Ballard said the church has had no indication that the missionaries' abductions were targeting the church specifically. He said they were likely abducted because the hostage takers believed they would "get some money, but we don't go that direction. We can't go that direction. We've got to pray them out of there," he said.
Elder Cook said 74 people were abducted in the area in January, 70 of them expatriates. He said the five missionary couples moved last month are among missionaries that are "transferred regularly to various places. If there is any concern, they are moved. But there has not been an evacuation or anything like that."
The moves are similar to what the church has done in the past "in places like Peru, when the Shining Path (terrorist organization) was going on a spree," Elder Ballard said. "We had to pull the missionaries back, and we've done so in other Latin nations. We've had a watch over them when there are elections that come up — we do everything we can to keep them safe.
"Security issues around the world are getting more difficult" for the church, which has 53,000 missionaries in various parts of the world. "We don't have to look very far, just look at Trolley Square," Elder Ballard said, referring to the shootings there on Feb. 12 that left six people dead and four wounded.
"We have to make moves and adjustments every day somewhere in the world. It's a big world, and it's getting progressively more violent."
The church declined to name the four missionaries, but Elder Cook said all are serving in their own country — two of them from Lagos and the other two from Enugu.
Elder Ballard said another local priesthood leader, Elder Loveday Nwampka, has been "talking with local people and encouraging community involvement. The tribal council in that area is very disturbed and upset that missionaries have been taken hostage," he said. Elder Cook added that the local effort to push for the missionaries' release includes non-LDS people there.
The local tribal council has "been interfacing with" the hostage-takers, Elder Ballard said.
"They know who has taken the missionaries. We don't, but they do. And this is sensitive enough that we were doing all we could to keep this quiet until we successfully get them freed. We hope the publicity doesn't end up creating a problem for them."
The LDS Church has about 75,000 members in Nigeria, with 14 stakes and more than 100 individual congregations. The Nigerian Port Harcourt Mission in which the abductions occurred is one of five LDS missions in the African nation.
President Gordon B. Hinckley first visited Nigeria in February 1998 and spoke to a crowd of more than 13,000 Latter-day Saints in Port Harcourt. He returned in August 2005 to dedicate the nation's first temple in the city of Aba.
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com