Abuja — The police have freed a Lebanese worker kidnapped from a building site on the edge of a lagoon in the commercial hub of Lagos, killing six of the abductors in the process.

LEADERSHIP gathered that the officers and men of the Nigerian police also recovered the sum of $230,000 (N30 million) ransom paid to the kidnappers who were dressed as policemen.

The kidnappers had last Monday tried to abduct two foreigners from a construction site at the water's edge on Victoria Island, one of the most exclusive and expensive districts of Lagos, but one of them managed to escape.

An international media outfit quoted the Lagos state police spokesman, Mr. Frank Mba, as saying that the kidnappers arrived the construction site in a speedboat while his men tactically engaged the kidnappers in a gun-battle after they collected a ransom of 30 million naira.

According to him, they (police) rescued the captive unharmed and also recovered the 30 million naira ransom.

"Unfortunately, six of the kidnappers were killed in the gun battle.

"Such kidnappings by gunmen in speedboats are common in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa's oil and gas industry, but are rare in Lagos , Nigeria 's most populous city of around eight million people, spread over a series of lagoons on the tip of the Atlantic Ocean."

Many international oil multinationals and other companies have moved expatriate staff from the restive southern delta to Lagos in recent years because of the worsening security situation in the region. Nigeria's main oil unions have also repeatedly threatened to launch potentially crippling strikes to protest insecurity in the volatile region that accounts for nearly all of Nigeria 's oil output.