The company employing a Lebanese construction worker kidnapped in southern Nigeria this week said Friday it would not pay any ransom for his release.
"As a responsible company doing legitimate business, we will seek a peaceful means to secure the release of our worker, but we will not bow to blackmail to pay ransom," an official of Homan Engineering told AFP by telephone.
Oil companies operating in the oil-rich but restive Niger Delta usually pay ransoms to kidnappers in exchange for the freeing of employees but none has ever publicly admitted to doing so.
On Thursday, an unidentified caller had demanded a 50 million naira (390,000 dollars, 304,000 euros) ransom for the release of the Lebanese worker, who was abducted by gunmen near Port Harcourt on Wednesday.
"The strange caller has not called back. We were thinking he might be a lead to the eventual release of our man," the company official said.
He said efforts were being intensified to locate the hostage, two days after he was captured.
"We are still looking for him. We are in regular contact with the Nigerian security forces to locate his whereabouts so that we can negotiate his release," he said.
The kidnapping of the Lebanese brings to six the total number of foreign workers still held by unknown armed gangs in the volatile Niger Delta region.
The others are two Germans, a Briton, an Irishman and a US citizen.
The latest seizure came at the wake of a stern warning by President Olusegun Obasanjo that the authorities would deal "firmly" with kidnappers of expatriates.
The past two weeks have seen some 15 expatriates taken prisoner in Nigeria, Africa's largest producer and world's sixth biggest exporter. Nine of them were released after spending some days in captivity.
Four suspects were on Wednesday arraigned and charged with the kidnapping of expatriates as well as engaging in terrorist acts in the region.
Since the beginning of the year, some 40 foreign oil workers have been abducted and released after spending days or weeks in captivity.