The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has tackled the Presidency over comments by Vice President Kashim Shettima condemning its industrial action over a rift with the Dangote refinery.
PENGASSAN told press on Monday that it would take same action if its members were sacked again.
This comes as some individuals staged a protest in Kaduna, accusing PENGASSAN of attempting to sabotage the Dangote refinery.
PENGASSAN had last week shut down critical oil and gas facilities over allegations that Dangote refinery sacked 800 workers who joined the union. But the Dangote refinery said it only sacked a few workers who were sabotaging the facility, saying this was part of the company’s reorganisation.
But oil and gas workers embarked on a strike in defence of their colleagues, causing the nation losses in oil and gas production as well as a drop in power generation.
The intervention of the Federal Government restored normalcy as PENGASSAN suspended the strike on Wednesday after the Dangote Group was asked to redeploy the sacked workers to other business units.
Despite the suspension of the strike that caused queues in filling stations, the price of cooking gas has yet to return to about N900 per kg, as it still sold for N2,000 in Lagos and other places as of Monday.
Speaking on Monday at the opening of the 2025 Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, Shettima described Dangote as an institution and a pillar of Nigeria’s economic development. He warned that Nigeria is greater than PENGASSAN, and no one should hold the country to ransom.
“Aliko Dangote is not an individual; he’s an institution, and he’s a leading light in Nigeria’s economic parliament,” the Vice President said.
“And how we treat this gentleman will determine how outsiders will judge us. If he had invested $10bn in Microsoft, in Amazon, or in Google, he probably might be worth $70 to $80bn by now. But he opted to invest in his country, and we owe it to future generations to jealously protect, promote, preserve, and protect the interests of this great Nigeria.
“I wish to call for caution, retrospection, and a deeper sense of patriotism from both labour and the organised private sector in defining and improving the relationship between labour and industry in the interest of maintaining our steadily improving economic fortunes. It’s not about holding the whole nation to ransom because of a minor labour dispute.
“Nigeria is greater than PENGASSAN. Nigeria is greater than each and every one of us,” Shettima emphasised.
Reacting, the National President of PENGASSAN, Festus Osifo, said the nation was bigger than Dangote and the Presidency as well.
According to Osifo, PENGASSAN had a mandate to protect the jobs of its members sacked by the Dangote refinery for joining the association. This mandate, he said, would be discharged whenever the next arises.
“Of course the nation is bigger than PENGASSAN, the way it’s bigger than Dangote and the Presidency. We have a mandate to protect the jobs of our members, that we will discharge whenever the need arises,” Osifo told The PUNCH.
Osifo, who doubles as the President of the Trade Union Congress, stressed that if the same situation that led to the sack of its workers occured again, it would deploy the same strike action to address it.
“Should this same event occur again tomorrow, our approach will be exactly the same,” he stated.
Asked for his reaction to social media comments that the Federal Government might be pushed to dissolve PENGASSAN because a strike by its members threatened energy security, Osifo responded, “Does the law prohibit workers’ right to strike?”
Similarly, the General Secretary of PENGASSAN, Lumumba Okugbawa, said, “Is Nigeria not bigger than any individual or institution?”
