Nigeria oil workers shut down state oil company, NNPC, over unbundling

Angry oil workers have shut down all offices
and facilities of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in protest of
Tuesday’s splitting of the state oil company by
the federal government.
There are fears of fresh fuel scarcity as a
result of the protest.
The government had announced the
unbundling of the NNPC into seven
independent units.
Two major unions in the oil and gas sector
had on Friday rejected the planned splitting.
The spokesperson for the Petroleum and
Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of
Nigeria, PENGASSAN, Emmanuel Ojugbana,
had said that the union was not carried along
in the decision to split the company.
Similarly, the president of the Nigeria Union
of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers
(NUPENG), Igwe Achese, had said union would
not accept the decision without knowing how
the manpower that would operate in the 30
companies would be managed.
On Tuesday, the Minister of State for
Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu,
announced the unbundling of the oil company
into seven independent units, namely
Upstream, Downstream, Gas & Power
Marketing, Refineries and Ventures, Corporate
Planning & Services and Finance and
Accounts.
Each of the units would be headed by chief
executive officers, namely Bello Rabiu for
Upstream; Henry Ikem-Onih (Downstream);
Saudu Mohammed (Gas & Power Marketing);
Anibor Kragha (Refineries), while Babatunde
Adeniran would be in charge of Ventures.
The chief executive officer in charge of
Finance & Services would be Isiaka
Abdulrazaq, while the Executive Head,
Corporate Services will be Isa Inuwa.
On the workers’ fears, the minister said the
exercise has a “zero sum in terms of job loss”.
“The principle of restructuring approved by
the President is that nobody losses work,” he
said. “I do not have the mandate of the
president to create a job loss situation, but to
try to ensure that everyone gets busy, unless
for reasons of bad staff performance and
fraud. There is no mass attempt to let people
go.”
He said the decision to embark on the
restructuring followed an analysis of the
number of staff, which revealed that the
corporation was over-staffed, and therefore
the need for them to be meaningfully engaged.
The only way to realize that objective, the
minister said, was to create jobs for everybody
in the system to him enable have something
doing.
“We don’t want people coming to the office to
read newspapers. We want everybody to get
busy and earn money. If we do that we will
realise that there would be adequate staff to
man the different units, and that we don’t
really have the problem of over-staff after
all,” he said.