DOUALA, Cameroon

Bandits on Tuesday night attacked Chinese and security personnel working on a hydroelectric dam in Zunguru, Niger State in western Nigeria, security sources quoted by local media said on Wednesday.

"Bandits killed two Niger State natives and abducted two Chinese expatriates on Tuesday night," the Investigative Journalism Foundation, a Nigerian NGO, reported, citing Wasiu Abiodun, spokesman for the Niger State Police Command.

They were abducted while one of their compatriots was shot and two local workers who were also injured died on the way to hospital, according to the same source.

The police are looking for three other Chinese workers who went missing in the incident.

Kidnappings in general and those of Chinese workers are recurrent Nigeria. In 2021, several attacks took place as in previous years.

Among others, on June 16, 2021, four Chinese workers on the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railroad project were abducted in Ogun State by gunmen while a policeman was killed in the operation in June 2021, the Guardian, a Nigerian online media outlet, reported citing security sources.

At a press conference on Nov. 22, 2021, Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, also recalled the kidnapping of three Chinese by armed robbers at a private Chinese company in Kogi State, Nigeria.

During the same year, kidnappings of Chinese citizens in Nigeria "occurred from time to time, increasing the security risk," he noted.

Also on April 5, 2021, two Chinese employees of a Chinese-funded company in Osun State, Nigeria, were kidnapped, Zhao recalled at an earlier press conference.

He said the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Chinese embassies and consulates have issued multiple warnings to Chinese citizens, discouraging them from traveling to high-risk areas.

"The situation has never been ideal," he said, referring to the context of the deployment of "a number" of Chinese-funded projects and companies in Nigeria.

However, despite this situation, China does not resort to evacuation because of occasional individual cases, he said.

China has always prioritized its cooperation with Nigeria and has made Nigeria a major strategic partner, according to the Chinese authorities.

Data from the China-Africa Research Initiative of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) reports more than 12,000 Chinese workers in Nigeria are out of more than 180,000 in Africa.

The bilateral relationship between Nigeria and China has ramped up trade from $1.9 billion in 2013 to about $20 billion in 2019, according to a report by Global Voices, an international human rights activist’s network.

The China Global Investment Tracker, managed by the American Enterprise Institute also reports more than $40 billion Chinese companies’ investment in Nigeria by 2020, mostly shared in transportation infrastructure with $17.1 billion and $16.5 billion in energy projects.