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4 September, 2006
Nigerian oil workers’ unions, steadfastly acting as NUPENGASSAN, met in a Joint National Executive Council (NEC) on 30 August and issued a mandate to both government and energy companies that violence must stop and that the unions’ longstanding demands must be seriously implemented. ICEM affiliates NUPENG and PENGASSAN plans a three-day warning strike, starting 13 September across all oil and gas installations of the region if immediate action is not undertaken.
If the government fails to provide a peaceful and safe working environment for oil and gas workers in the region following the warning strike, the unions would call an indefinite strike.
Following the day-long meeting in Benin City, a communiqué was issued containing harsh words for both the Nigerian national government’s “poor response” to the rash of kidnappings along the Niger Delta as well as to state governments, which have displayed a “hypocritical and non-chalant attitude … in the deteriorating state of insecurity and criminality which now pervades the entire region.”
The statement says that the recent federal policy by President Olusegun Obasanjo to meet force-with-force has only created “deepening insecurity” in the region. NUPENGASSAN’s complete NEC communiqué can be read here.
The two unions also condemned governmental handling in the release of a kidnapped PENGASSAN member last month. Comrade Nelson Ujeye was killed on 20 August when joint military and police troops ambushed a militant youth group on Niger Delta waters as he was about to be released. The communiqué called it “a grievous fratricidal sacrifice that arose from applying a negative approach.” The story of Comrade Nelson Ujeye’s abduction and subsequent death, including the ICEM’s statement on the incident, can be found in a recent InBrief Alert here.
The NEC also took note of the increasing number of cases of expatriate quota abuse inside the employment ranks of energy companies doing business in Nigeria.
NUPENGASSAN, also at the meeting, reiterated its incriminations against the government’s privatisation authority in the sale of state-owned Eleme Petro Chemical Ltd. Due diligence was not done in investigating the buyer of the Port Harcourt olefins refinery, the three-year-old Thai company Indorama. The enterprise is vastly under-valued, according to the two unions.
The NEC also condemned pipeline vandalism, as well as the fact that the government allowed the nation’s five refineries to become mere transport “conduits” of imported petroleum products, rather than emphasizing local refining of such products to meet Nigeria’s domestic needs.
And finally, the unions’ grievances include strong objection to merging the Petroleum Training Institute, established by law to provide mid-level Nigerian staff to the oil and gas industries, into the University of Benin, and calls on the government to grant full autonomy to the Department of Petroleum Resources, so that it can effectively serve as the oil and gas regulator.
The ICEM strongly supports the unions’ warning strike next week, as well as their other demands. The ICEM also calls on oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria to apply the same efforts and resources in securing a safe work and living environment for Nigerian oil workers, and their families, as they do for foreign national employees.