The Oil and gas workers are embarking on a nationwide strike in January.
The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), declared on Tuesday December 17th 2013 that they would commence a total and indefinite strike as from the first week of January, 2014.
The two trade unions in the oil and gas sector of the economy were protesting the declaration by the Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke and the decision by the Federal Government to sell the refineries by the first quarter of next year.
The workers who staged a peaceful protest at the headquarters of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Abuja said the strike will hold if the Federal Government fails to reverse its plan to privatise the country’s four refineries.
The leader of the protest, president of PENGASSAN, Babatunde Ogun, said,
“We are giving them (government) from now till December 24 to rescind their plan of privatising the refineries. We will allow travellers to be able to move from one destination to the other till the end of the year.
Failure to retract the statement on planned privatisation will lead to a nationwide strike beginning from the first week of January 2014. We hope they reverse the plan as failure will result to complete grounding of activities in the sector.”
He said the decision had already been taken in respect of the strike and emphasised that there would be no need for further discussion or engagement with the government because all what the government had been doing were clearly against their resolutions and decisions taken after their previous meetings, especially on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
