The Dangote Petroleum Refinery is no foe to be crushed; it is rather a treasure that should be treated as inviolate. It may be a private initiative but it is a cherished national asset and pride. It is historical both in size and ambition.
In sheer magnificence and grandeur, the plant is a national monument that every truly patriotic Nigerian should be proud of. A 650,000 barrels per day-capacity integrated refinery, the $20 billion behemoth sits comfortably on 2,635 hectares of vast swathes of land, said to be six times the size of Victoria Island, Lagos.
This is why the adversarial battles recently waged against the refinery by two powerful workers unions in the oil sector, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), are seriously bothersome.
NUPENG is a trade union that represents junior and mid-level workers across Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, from exploration and production to refining, distribution and retail. PENGASSAN is on the other side of the coin, representing the senior staff in the sector.
The fiendish bellicosity of the two unions, their outlandish threats and resorts to actions calculated to bring the Dangote behemoth “down to its knees” over mundane labour issues that could easily have been ironed out on the negotiation table verge on the villaneous. They are akin to seeking to kill an ant with a sledgehammer.
Dangote Refinery is, indeed, Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s largest single-train, with the capacity to handle three billion standard cubit-foot of gas per day. Besides, the investment is a big plus to the nation’s economy, especially the hitherto epileptic energy sector.
Its ambition is to meet the national requirements of all refined products hundred percent, end the nation’s disgraceful dependence on imports and have a surplus of each of the products for exports. It also promises to create direct and indirect jobs as well as elicit direct foreign investments (DFI) to boost the nation’s economy.
The multi-billion dollars investment has the capacity to create a market for $21billion per annum of Nigeria’s crude. These are feats that speak to Dangote Refinery’s vast potential if it operates in full throttle. It may not have inched close to all of these thresholds yet, ostensibly owing to the teething hiccups it has been contending with, but it has already put paid to the recurring era of fuel scarcity and legendary fuel queues, some as long as kilometers, that had for decades hallmarked the perennially crisis-ridden oil sector.
It has also sundered the nation’s perpetual reliance on fuel imports and engendered competition among the players in the downstream sector, especially with the deregulation of the sector.
Now, why would the two unions be so truculent against Dangote Refinery? What are the issues in contention? The unions’ rifts with Dangote Refinery are defined broadly by workers’ rights, monopoly fears and the changing balance of power in the country’s petroleum industry.
Specifically, at the heart of NUPENG’s dispute with the refinery is its decision to deploy 4,000 new Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) trucks for direct distribution of fuel and the alleged order barring its drivers from unionizing.
The refinery unveiled the new logistics model in June, this year, which is poised to reshape Nigeria’s downstream sector. It announced that it would begin direct distribution of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) and diesel to filling stations, manufacturers, aviation companies, telecoms, and other bulk consumers.
However, the policy pitched the refinery against NUPENG. While the refinery presented the new distribution model as an innovation and efficiency, NUPENG viewed it as a threat. For decades, it has been one of Nigeria’s most influential workers unions. Its members — tanker drivers, depot workers, and oil staff controlled the movement of transported fuel across the country.
The union also took umbrage at the refinery’s alleged order barring the company’s new truck drivers from union membership. NUPENG claimed that Dangote Petroleum Refinery is blocking the drivers from unionising. The union alleged that drivers are being compelled to sign contracts barring them from joining any labour body, an action it said would strip the workers of their constitutional right to freedom of association.
PENGASSAN’s own grouse against the refinery was similar. It was the alleged sack by Dangote Refinery of its 800 members also for unionizing that was the trigger of its own standoff with the refinery.
With fears that Dangote’s new distribution policy and its alleged move to insulate its drivers against unionism were calculated attempts to break its(NUPENG’s)monopoly, NUPENG convened an emergency national executive council meeting and came out with a strongly-worded statement, accusing Dangote Refinery of “flagrant violation of workers’ constitutional rights to freely associate” and vowed to mobilise its members to resist it.
The union argued that the new transport model would lead to loss of jobs for its members in the refinery as new drivers might be employed to replace the old ones.
“Dangote is discarding drivers who toil day and night, while seeking to silence them. They don’t want the workers to have any voice or representation,” declared NUPENG’s national secretary, Olawale Afolabi.
Dangote Refinery, however, refuted NUPENG’s allegations, insisting that claims of anti-labour practices, monopolistic behaviour, and planned fuel price hikes are “entirely unfounded”.
“Assertions that drivers are compelled to waive union rights are categorically false,” the statement said, adding: “Central to NUPENG’s allegations is the roll-out of over 4,000 CNG-powered bulk trucks, which the union claims could displace existing employees.
“The deployment of CNG-powered trucks is a strategic initiative designed to support national energy transition goals, not to displace existing jobs,” it stated.
Each truck, it stated, would be operated by a six-person team, with drivers receiving salaries significantly above the national minimum wage, plus medical cover, pensions, housing allowances, and long-term access to housing loans. The company aims to have 10,000 such trucks in operation by year-end, potentially creating over 60,000 direct jobs.
The dispute, however, escalated as NUPENG threatened a nationwide debilitating strike with effect from Monday, September 8, 2025 and began to mobilize for it.In its own case, PENGASSAN also declared a nationwide strike over the alleged mass dismissal of more than 800 Nigerian workers by the Dangote Refinery with effect from Monday, September 29, 2025.
In a circular issued after an emergency National Executive Council (NEC) meeting on Saturday, September 27, 2025, and signed by General Secretary Lumumba Okugbawa, the union accused the refinery of breaching Nigeria’s labour laws, the Constitution, and International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions by allegedly sacking workers for joining the association.
The NEC claimed that the refinery had replaced the dismissed staff with “over 2,000 Indians,” describing the move as “an affront to all workers in Nigeria.” But Dangote Refinery denied sacking any worker over union membership. It said it only disengaged some of its staff over repeated cases of sabotage capable of compromising the company’s security and other interests.
An online publication actually quoted sources linking the sacking of the Dangote Refinery’s workers to a WhatsApp group created by PENGASSAN whose officials reportedly reached out to Dangote Refinery’s employees, inviting them to join the union and promising protection.
The PENGASSAN officials were alleged to have shared forms with the refinery’s employees through the WhatsApp platform and requested daily reports on the refinery operations.
The affected workers allegedly shared sensitive information about the refinery on the platform. This infraction eventually leaked to Dangote Refinery’s management, following which the employees involved were dismissed.
Government, however, mediated in the disputes and stymied the strikes declared by the two unions. In the case of NUPENG, the mediation through the Directorate of State Security (DSS) and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity led to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which required Dangote to allow unionisation between September 9 and 22, 2025, with no victimization and to report back to the Ministry of Labour.
In the MoU signed on September 9, 2025, Dangote management acknowledged that “unionisation is a fundamental right of its employees and pledged to implement it without interference.”
The Dangote-PENGASSAN face-off was also eventually resolved in the early hours of Wednesday, October 1, after rounds of failed negotiations, heavily attended by top government officials, including ministers, security chiefs and heads of oil sector regulatory agencies.
Dangote Refinery, among the terms of truce, is expected to begin the process of recalling the sacked employees and redeploying them to other companies within the Dangote Group with no loss of pay.
In addition, the company is to allow the workers to unionize freely because it is their right and no worker should be victimized for playing any role in the dispute. PENGASSAN is also to begin the process of calling off its strike.
As posited earlier, the belligerent approach adopted by the two unions to ventilate their grievances against a national asset like Dangote Refinery was a needless overkill. Threatening its operations with a blanket shutdown like PENGASSAN did was a reckless brinkmanship.
And the union’s directive to block the supply of gas to the behemoth read more like an economic sabotage than protecting workers’ rights.
It is high time our labour unions changed their tactics for prosecuting labour or trade disputes. They have always resorted to the last resort — strike— first. It is rather archaic and jejune. It is colonial mentality for workers to continue to prosecute labour disputes like wars and relate with governments or employers as if they are foes or adversaries.
Trade Disputes Act has, however, provided a modern and decent process of prosecuting trade disputes, which includes mediation, arbitration and lawful strike notice, in that order. It is after mediation and arbitration have failed that strike becomes ineluctable.
In the final analysis, Dangote Group itself needs to be flexible, humane and heedful to the necessary labour laws guiding employers-employees relations. The Group should stop trammelling its workers in that area and allow them a free rein to unionize. It is their right under the law.
Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution, Section 12 of the Trade Unions Act and multiple international conventions, to which Nigeria is a signatory, guarantee every worker’s right to associate or unionize freely.
Dangote Refinery specifically should implement the terms of its truce brokered with both NUPENG and PENGASSAN to the letter. To do otherwise is to upend the whole arrangement because the latter has threatened to show its true colour and make the strike total and brutal should the company renege on any of the agreements brokered.
A word is enough for the wise!
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