•Oil workers should stop punishing Nigerians over flimsy excuses
For four days last week, the economy would again be thrown into avoidable spasms as a result of the strike embarked upon by the nation’s powerful oil industry unions – the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG). It would, sadly again, be occasion to settle on their now familiar tradition of exploiting citizens’ vulnerability to the hilt; choosing a most opportunistic moment – the approach of the yuletide – to inflict pains on Nigerians.
The fact that this has since become their stock-in-trade is what makes it both regrettable and sad.
And what do these oil workers really want? It goes beyond the same old but familiar story expressed in the so-called failures to execute successful turnaround maintenance of the nation’s four refineries. Or even their new-found tales on the need for the Federal Government to evolve new strategies to combat pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft – a plague which, admittedly, the Jonathan administration has failed to contain.
As stakeholders, it goes without saying that their rather novel demand for an alignment of pump prices of petrol in the wake of the slump in global prices of crude oil would seem nothing extraordinary. No one can deny that these demands have some merit.
Again, like most Nigerians, the unions have the right to worry about the delay in the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB); or even the high rate divestment in the industry and its job losses arising from the non-passage of the PIB; the non-implementation of the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act; the appalling state of access roads to refineries and oil depots’ facilities and the general insecurity all over the country, which they point out, continues to claim the lives of their members.
Protesting the casualisation of oil workers is not only within their prerogative as organised labour; it is also their right to challenge unfair labour practices by companies and government agencies.
But then, are these the real issues? Even if they were, would they have sufficed to shut down an economy already under the throes of slump in global oil price? For all intents and purposes, the strike has merely revealed one fundamental problem with the unions that has been denied up till now – the belief that simply because they have the power, they can use it to force the hand of the government no matter how unrighteous their cause.
It seems to us that the two unions have merely used the pretext of the transfer and termination of one of PENGASSAN zonal officers in Rivers State, Elo Victor, by the management of Total Oil Nigeria to punish the nation. It is wrong as it is immoral. Of course, only in the context of the weapon of blackmail that the instrument of strike has become in the hands of PENGASSAN and NUPENG can these be contemplated.
As for the refineries, this newspaper has long argued that the Federal Government loses nothing by selling them. That position, if anything, remains as valid as it is compelling, even now. More than five years after the botched privatisation of the refineries in Port Harcourt and Kaduna, and with billions of naira thrown in for their Turn Around Maintenance with nothing to show for it, the position of NUPENG and PENGASSAN is not only inexplicable; it appears only the two unions still live in the illusion that the Federal Government can ever get the refineries to work optimally. The irony here is that both NUPENG and PENGASSAN which appear just as culpable as the Federal Government in foisting the current atmosphere in which the nation has found it nigh impossible to let the refineries go still think that the government should continue to pour money into the sink holes.
Much as we concede to the right of the unions to stand up for the welfare of their members, these cannot be at the risk of plunging the larger economy into turmoil. We consider last week’s strike as unnecessary; if anything, it was an abuse of the strike weapon.
