Nigerian Oil Workers’ Unions Offer Common Sense Reforms

Nigerian oil workers’ unions again are spearheading the call for security, as well as meeting the challenges inherent in oil and gas production in a developing country. Two weeks ago, the unions PENGASSAN and NUPENG conducted a three-day workshop in Ibadan, Oyo State, to train union members to the multi-faceted changes taking hold in Nigeria’s oil and gas fields.

Those changes include outsourcing, reliance on fixed-term employment, privatisation of government assets, and de-unionisation. The government’s inability to deal effectively with the Niger Delta’s natural resources is also cause for great concern.

    

The workshops produced a long list of necessary reforms that would help remove corruption from government agencies and bring economic opportunities to the indigenous peoples of the Niger River Delta.

“The kidnapping and killing of workers in the Niger Delta Region continues to pose serious threats to the security of our members and other workers in the region,” said PENGASSAN President Peter Esele. “The vandalizing of oil pipelines by economic saboteurs has continued to keep our refineries without crude, leaving the entire nation to depend on imported petroleum products.”

The workshops also painted a critical picture of the Nigerian government, from the Oil and Gas Committee Report that has brought on privatisation and casualisation to its handling of the kidnappings and killings so common in the Delta this year.

The conference was held during a three-week period in which seven foreign nationals, all employed in the oil industry, had been kidnapped by an unknown youth militia group. The seven were abducted on 3 October from an ExxonMobil residential compound in Eseakpan, southern Akwa Iborn State, which is used to house contract workers. The seven were released more than a fortnight later following negotiations between the industry and group.

Esele pledged to the trade unionists in attendance that the unions would act as a legitimate “pressure group,” and that “no stone will be left unturned in our efforts” to bring economic dignity and opportunities to Nigerian citizens.

In a separate trade union gathering occurring in Akwa Iborn State at the same time, the quarterly meeting of PENGASSAN’s Producers’ Forum called on the Nigerian national assembly to amend the statutes governing the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The body says the commission has failed to address the development needs of citizens in the region.

The Producers’ Forum suggests that the 3% funding of the NDDC that comes from oil prospecting companies should be directly used by the communities in which these firms operate. The forum proposed that monitoring of such projects be undertaken by the National Petroleum Investment Agency. These recommendations, as part of a seven-point action plan, were passed on to PENGASSAN’s national secretariat.