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22 March, 2010
PENGASSAN’s Peter Esele won re-election as President-General of Nigeria’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), the national trade centre for senior staff associations. Esele won a contested election for a second three-year term at the 8th Triennial National Delegates Conference in Benin, Edo State, from 17-20 March.
Esele, a former President of the ICEM-affiliated Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), is credited – together with re-elected Secretary-General John Kolawole – of building permanent structures into the TUC, a federation comprised of 24 senior staff unions.
Nigeria TUC President, Peter Esele
Esele is also credited with heightening the roles of women in the TUC, from mandating seats to women on TUC’s National Administrative Council to creating a Women’s Wing of the TUC to conducting ILO-sponsored workshops for development of women in trade union leadership roles.
“I am proud to honour the diverse contributions of women in advancing the common cause of freedom, justice, and equality,” said Esele, who used International Women’s Day to call on the government to use 8 March as a work-free day in respect of what women have accomplished.
Esele served as Deputy Vice President of PENGASSAN prior to 2005 and the tragic airplane crash of 10 December 2005 that claimed the life of PENGASSAN President Uche Okoro. He took over those duties then, winning re-election later in 2006. In 2008, already in his first term as TUC leader, he was defeated for the Presidency of PENGASSAN by Babatunde Ogun.
The TUC is one of two national labour centres in Nigeria. The other, representing workers enrolled in the country’s blue-collar unions, is the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC).