LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian government officials are set to meet with representatives of the country’s oil workers union on Monday, a union leader told The Associated Press, following a strike to protest the firing of oil workers at Africa’s biggest refiner. The walkout threatens to halt nationwide supply.
The union called Saturday on all its members to halt services after 800 oil workers were fired by Dangote Refinery, saying in a statement the mass layoff was “an affront to all workers in Nigeria and a deliberate violation of Nigeria’s labour laws, the Constitution, and ILO conventions”.
“We are meeting with (government officials) this afternoon,” said Lumumba Okugbawa, the secretary general of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or PENGASSAN, one of two main unions representing gas and oil workers in the country.
The strike by the oil workers’ union has halted operations at the country’s key oil and gas institutions. The oil industry is responsible for 80% of the revenue of Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s biggest oil producer.
The nation’s oil and natural gas sector has struggled for many years, and most of the state-run refineries operate far below capacity because of poor maintenance, according to analysts.
Hundreds of Nigerian workers working in the refinery had recently unionized by joining PENGASSAN to demand better pay and a safer working environment, according to laid-off workers who spoke to the AP.
“I worked there for two years and I did not get personal protective equipment, not even a face mask,” said one of the laid-off engineers, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. “The boots I have currently were given to me by a colleague who left (the refinery). Everyone wants to leave.”
Last week, Dangote Refinery said the workers, all Nigerian, had been sacked due to sabotage. “This exercise is not arbitrary. It has become necessary to safeguard the refinery from repeated acts of sabotage that have raised safety concerns and affected operational efficiency,” a statement by the company said.
In a separate statement, the company called PENGASSAN’s strike “lawless” and a “criminal conduct”.
A spokesperson for the company did not respond to a request for comments.
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, inaugurated the refinery, his most ambitious project, on the outskirts of the city of Lagos in May 2023 and began production last year after several years of delay.
The $20 billion piece of infrastructure has weaned Nigeria off external refinery processing and partly fixed the country’s acute foreign exchange problem that had exacerbated the economic woes of the West African nation under former president Muhammadu Buhari.
