The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has declared that it would take the same action if its members were sacked again.
The National President of PENGASSAN, Festus Osifo, made the declaration in reaction to the comments made by the presidency over its industrial action following staff rationalization by the Dangote Refinery.
PENGASSAN was making the statement in reaction to the Presidency criticism of the union’s industrial dispute with the Dangote Refinery that sacked 800 members of the refinery accused of sabotaging the factory.
Osifo who said the nation was bigger than Dangote and the Presidency as well, added his union has a duty to protect its members sacked by the Dangote Refinery for joining the association.
He said any time the need arises, PENGASSAN would defend its workers.
“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 is also the President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), said that if a similar situation that led to the sack of its workers occurred again, his members would down tools.
He said the Federal Government would be violating the law if it dissolved the PENGASSAN because of a strike by its members.
Also, the General Secretary of PENGASSAN, Lumumba Okugbawa, said, “Is Nigeria not bigger than any individual or institution?”
It would be recalled that the union had last week closed major oil and gas facilities over allegations that Dangote refinery sacked 800 workers who joined the union. The action adversely affected major economic concerns in the country.
This led to the FG intervention and restored normalcy as PENGASSAN called off the strike on Wednesday after the Dangote Group was asked to redeploy the sacked workers to other business units.
Even after the suspension of the strike which led to 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 the matter Monday at the opening of the 2025 Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, Vice President Kashim Shettima said Dangote was an institution and a pillar of Nigeria’s economic development and warned that Nigeria is greater than PENGASSAN, and no one should hold the country to ransom.
Shettima had said “Aliko Dangote is not an individual; he’s an institution, and he’s a leading light in Nigeria’s economic parliament.
“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.”
