9 February, 2009
A strike deadline in Nigeria has been extended through this week in order that talks can continue between ICEM’s two oil and gas union affiliates – NUPENG and PENGASSAN – and the Ministers of Labour and Petroleum on the urgent need to guarantee security and safety for workers and their families in the Niger Delta.
A deadline by the unions to pull their workers out of Niger Delta oil and gas installations was due to expire today. But on Friday, 6 February, after a meeting with Rivers States Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the unions agreed to more talks this week. Leaders of the two unions will meet in Abuja beginning today with Minister of Work and Productivity Adetokunbo Olyukayode and Minister of Petroleum H. Odein Ajumogobia on viable solutions to the security situation.
Port Harcourt, other parts of Rivers State, as well as neighbouring Niger Delta states have been hit by a rash of kidnappings against family members of PENGASSAN and NUPENG members in the past few weeks. Armed groups are calling for ransoms of up to US$100,000 after grabbing at gunpoint innocent family members of oil and gas workers.
Another incident occurred Friday, 6 February. An ambush at a Shell Petroleum Development Corp. (SPDC) gas plant in Utorogun, Delta State, resulted in three militants being killed. First reports cite that no workers were harmed, although that has not always been the case in such attacks.
Earlier in the week, a Nigerian worker of Agip, a subsidiary of Italian ENI, was kidnapped. He was released without the company acknowledging whether or not a ransom was paid. On 29 January, the 11-year-old daughter of a PENGASSAN member, SPDC employee Samuel Awolesun, was murdered when she and her nine-year-old brother were kidnapped on their way to school. The young girl was shot while resisting the kidnap.
In a PENGASSAN communiqué of 6 February, the union announced the boy had been released last week.
PENGASSAN and NUPENG count 12 kidnappings of oil and gas staff, their spouses, or family members since 24 January in Port Harcourt alone. Reports say that there have been at least ten attacks on vessels in waters off the Niger Delta since the first of the year.
“The insecurity in the delta has taken a new dimension,” NUPENG National President Peter Akpatason told the ICEM. “The government is not doing enough to protect staff and their families and this now has become a very serious industrial relations matter.”
PENGASSAN General Secretary Bayo Olowoshile said it is up to the government and state-run petroleum companies to prove why “our services should not be withdrawn from all upstream facilities until security is improved in the region.”
In the joint announcement Friday to all NUPENG and PENGASSAN zonal chairmen and branches, in which a new strike deadline was set for 13 February, the unions said, “We wish to inform (all workers) to await further directives as we engage the Federal and Rivers State Governments at this trying moment.”
Separately, the unions are also pressing the government and oil companies to address gaps in pay, working conditions, and social welfare benefits for casual workers and workers on fixed-term contracts. They are also building a case for better empowerment and employment opportunities for Nigerian nationals in the oil and gas industry, as well as support for liberalisation in the downstream sector if the existing private-sector employers commit to investments.