Should it surprise Nigerians that in the lingering industrial dispute between Dangote Refinery and the oil unions, PENGASSAN and NUPENG, the NLC’s immediate response, its contribution to the matter, is to mobilise its members for a nationwide strike? Its call for a strike is based on the exaggerated influence of its tiny membership.

The NLC and all its affiliate unions parade a tiny membership when placed against the far greater number of Nigerians that are employed one way or another but are not members of the labour unions. But these unions continue on the ignorant course that suggests they are the almighty force that must always have the last word due to nothing more significant than their control of the country’s energy sector. Their control of this sector has wreaked more havoc than good on Nigerians. 

The NLC jumped into the ongoing fray in the spirit of labour’s often self-serving slogan in which things can only be either white or black. As the unionists would often say, an injury to one is an injury to all. By getting PENGASSAN’s and NUPENG’s goat, Dangote Refinery has committed a mortal sin for which all Nigerians, not just the Dangote Refinery, must pay. It does not matter who is at fault- the NLC must first join the fight on the side of their comrades before any consideration of the issues at stake and how the resolution of those issues may benefit the majority, if not everyone concerned. Once Dangote staff are allowed to unionise locally, no law demands that they join PENGASSAN or NUPENG as these unions and the NLC seem to be saying.   

They are deploying the oversized influence of their members’ control of strategic sectors of the Nigerian economy to overwhelm their opponents who, by definition, are increasingly the Nigerian people who are made to bear the brunt of the incessant industrial disputes that are stirred by the unions’ leaders. They operate like criminal cartels and with codes that originate from the dark underworld. In what way is either PENGASSAN or NUPENG different from the NURTW in their pursuit of extortionate levies they demand as a matter of entitlement and for which they are not accountable to anyone but themselves?

These levies, like the N50, 000 they allegedly make from each tanker that leaves the loading depots (it is one of the unspoken reasons for the ongoing strike against Dangote), seem to go into the dark hole that are the pockets and personal bank accounts of the unionists, particularly their leaders. Labour unions have become money-making networks for those who pretend to be common men and women that populate their leadership ranks. When they are not making money, they are befriending politicians and other elements they pretend are their enemies within the country’s elite circles. The era of labour leaders who inhabited the same world as the people they led, men and women who struggled to earn a living wage/salary and truly belonged in the same economic class as their followers, the Michael Imoudus and Hassan Sumonus, who lived simply and modestly- their era is long gone.

Today’s labour leaders have jettisoned the brown khaki, buba and sokoto, for the well-tailored French suit. It may look like the khaki of old but only those afflicted with an eye ailment will fail to see the great difference. While walking the streets and haranguing politicians and entrepreneurial business people for so-called better working conditions for their members, they are busy amassing wealth for themselves. They are too timid to start a business of their own but they can make impossible demands of people who take such risks in the name of protecting the rights of workers. They are aspiring politicians who soon transform the soap box from where they fight in the name of the people into campaign stands to canvass votes for public office. How many labour leaders have become instant politicians who rush to join political parties soon after a lifetime of labour activism? 

They are not even interested in the Labour Party, the only workers’ party in the land. That has been turned into a special purpose vehicle for politicians too weak to compete in party primaries but are eager to splash millions of naira to win the presidential ticket of the party as the highest bidders. Present labour leaders lack the patience for their career as unionists to end before engaging in partisan politics. The unionists call themselves workers but they are closet moguls who own sprawling estates and send their children to the best schools in Europe and North America- all sponsored through proceeds from the kind of levies they impose on business owners, levies that are passed to the rest of the public as extra costs. It is only natural for the NLC to support PENGASSAN and NUPENG. As it would support ASUU that has issued a two-week strike ultimatum to Abuja over an MOU that the Federal Government has failed to honour for 16 years! 

ASUU left its primary business, which is the welfare of its members, to engage in the wider politics of saving Nigeria when it cannot save itself. Like NLC and PENGASSAN, it survives also on levies misnamed check-off dues that are deducted from members’ salaries every month. Nothing can be opaquer than the use to which these dues are deployed. Yet, the unions are a necessary evil. Without them, many business owners, indeed, many heads of institutions, say vice chancellors in the case of ASUU, will run amok as fully-made despots and embezzlers.

Supporting ASUU, as is supporting PENGASSAN and NUPENG, is for many Nigerian workers a matter of settling for the lesser of two evils. But when trees fall on trees, we must clear the debris from the top. This is why PENGASSAN and NUPENG must be identified for what they are right now: economic saboteurs determined to take us back to the Egypt where Nigerians sweated under the bondage of subsidising in billions of dollars marketers and importers of contaminated petrol that was exported to neighbouring countries. 

These three unions would rather we continue to run derelict refineries that offer some of the best conditions of service to workers, members of these unions, that have not refined a drop of petrol in decades. This is nothing but a mafia entreprise. As is their attempt at obstructing a business owner bold enough to invest billions of dollars in a refinery that has been producing both for local consumption and exportation for the first time in the country’s history. As for Dangote Refinery becoming a monopoly that would keep Nigerians in its chokehold later, that is a matter we should address when we get to that bridge. PENGASSAN, NUPENG and the NLC should keep their peace.