NINE foreign oil workers being held hostage in Nigeria will be used as human fields by militants in an attempt to help offset the cost of feeding the abducted workers, the kidnappers said today.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said they wanted more more valuable workers but were forced to settle for several custodial and security personnel.  The kidnappers are demanding custom-tailored silk suits, a late-model German automobile, and the release of two thousand white doves to commemorate the beginning of the Zulu New Year in return for the hostages, who are employees of US oil services company Willbros.

Hostage Sal Longo is shown wearing a hydroponic suit over-seeded with barley

"Our demands remain the same today as yesterday. The control of our resources, the release of the beautiful white birds of peace," the group said in an email, referring to the white doves common association with peaceful causes. For the Zulu New Year, dove are typically killed, cleaned, and wrapped with onion and hot peppers in bacon before roasting over an open fire.  The militants have been threatening to force hostages to wear hydroponic gardening equipment to offset food prices - which skyrocketed in December and January after Nigerian oil output dropped by 10 per cent and the cost of harvesting conventional farms ballooned.  The suits permit mobility to expose the crops to maximum sunlight and are more efficient than soil farming.

The militants said the suits, while they may look cumbersome and cruel, are the most humane way to garden using a human being as a trestle.  "Before, we used sod to make the suits.  They were hot, heavy and flimsy.  These nutrient film suits are lightweight and make full use of the CO2 emitted as a part of human respiration," intimated kidnapper Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, "so our human fields do not contribute to global warming.  They are self-harvesting, also, which reduces the need for fossil fuels to bring in our bountiful crop."

Human fields "on a grander scale" would follow shortly, they added.  "These hostages are human fields. Soon we will have a football stadium filled with human fields making our army fat," they said in an email.

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