JOHN, THE SCOTTISH OILMAN, felt a tug on his shoulder and looked up to see a gunman, who said, “Come with me.” He and five other hostages — an American, a Briton, an Irishman, a Pole and a German — were pushed into minivans idling outside...

“I had no choice,” he said. “I had a gun and I had to make a living. We started bunkering oil pipelines” — or stealing oil — “then kidnapping expatriates — a lot of white men.”

...
De Don admitted kidnapping three people. One of them was the 7-year-old son of a politician. He ran an amateur operation; the ransoms he received were paltry compared with those commanded by someone like Nwaeze. “I have never kidnapped whites,” he told me. “That’s where the real money comes.” Still, he made enough in the past year to rent an apartment in Port Harcourt, buy a 2002 Mercedes sedan, support his family and open a beauty salon for one of his girlfriends. He hoped one day to buy a cinema where he could show soccer matches.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/magazine/06kidnapping-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all