Comrade Francis Olabode Johnson is the President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN). In this interview, he speaks to MOSES JOHN on cash call and other issues affecting workers in the oil and gas sector.
What is your reaction to absence of President Muhammadu Buhari at the May Day celebration?
One thing I must tell you is that for PENGASSAN, we are affiliate of Trade Union Congress (TUC) and I also know that events like this are done under the umbrella of NLC and TUC and I also know that the president would have been invited or notified officially. And he also would have communicated his attendance or non-attendance to the leadership of TUC and NLC.
Going to your question, today being a significant day in the life of workers all over the world one would have expected President Buhari to have come to the programme being the first May Day rally under his administration. Expectation is that he is unable to attend he would have mandated nobody less than the Vice President, Yemi Osibanjo, to show that he feels our pain.
If he could not send the vice president, you could have at least sent the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). Not doing that was not the best for the workers.
As labour leaders, we also went round to get the feelings of the workers, and they are not too happy. Based on the fact that when this government was campaigning they reached out to workers and the workers also bought into their change ideology. But today their moral are dampened. Sending the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, is not enough, because normally the minister would be here. Buhari’s presence here would have sent a good signal to the workers. But like I said, the leadership of NLC and TUC will know better why he could not make it.
Fuel scarcity has lingered for some time now, how do you think this could be put an end?
When this government came on board, even before their inauguration, PENGASSAN Central Working Committee (CWC) met and gave directives to sector leaders that they should give us a list of their very critical problems. When that was done, we sent our recommendation and a road map in the oil and gas sector to the president.
In our letter, we recommended that a state of emergency be declared in the oil and gas sector. The truth is, despite all the talk about diversification, oil still remains the main stay of our economy. It is when there is stability and improvement that we can start saying, ‘ok, let us not put all our eggs in one basket.’
How has the fall in oil price affect your members?
It has affected our members’ job greatly. We had a meeting with the minister of labour, just as the ministry also had a meeting with the international Oil Companies (IOCs). The main issue during those meetings was that the government main campaigning point before the election was job creation but after it came on board and the oil prices crashed, we cannot do job creation. If you cannot do job creation for now, let’s make sure that the jobs our members have they are able to keep it.
Casualisation and use of contract staff is a serious challenge in your sector. How do you access the situation?
Like I said earlier, one of the fall out of the meetings on the instance of the minister of labour and employment had with the key stakeholders was that a committee was set under the chairmanship of late Barr. James Ocholi and was given eight weeks to work. Let me also use this medium to say that yes the man is late but there are other members of the committee, so we are waiting for the federal government to re -appoint a minister of state for labour so that the committee can continue their deliberation on the mandates given to them. Members of the committee comprise of all the stakeholders in the sector and I believe they will deal with the issues affecting the sector.
Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), is one critical document which industry watchers believe if passed into law will address challenges in the sector, in your opinion why do you think the Bill hasn’t been pass?
Let me tell you that in all we do in life, honesty, sincerity and commitment must be our watch word. It is not about our selfish interest, for instance you hear about the budget has been padded and if you look at it, when you put more money, where are you going with this money at the end of the day you may leave it behind. Your children may come and enjoy the money, but if you don’t settle things well, you might be hanging a burden on their neck. So why don’t you seat down holistically and look at it.
Most of our government functionaries love fire brigade approach to issues, for instance we wrote a letter requesting for audiences over some issues of great concern to our members and after more than two weeks now, nothing has been done and by the time we take an action, they would say the unions have started again.
On the issue of PIB, politics, interests and other sentiments have engulfed the Bill and that is why it will not be passed. However, the bill if passed would bring lasting peace to the oil and gas industry.
Can you throw more light on the issue of cash call?
Cash call means the percentage the federal government agreed to pay the IOCs that accumulated over the years and is running into $500billion or more now and the way it is going some the IOCs are going to be owing workers salary. As the main stream of the economy we don’t want that to happen. And that is why we wrote for the quick intervention of the minister of state for petroleum and natural resources, and we also copied director General Department of State Services (DSS), minister of labour and employment but up till date nothing has been done about it.
Now we want that government should know that the effect of this would be shutting down production, which is crude oil terminals, float stations and everything, you know the impact on the economic.
Also on the issue of refineries, for example, I was on a facility tour to Kaduna refinery and one major challenge is that we fix our mind on PMS, neglecting other areas.
In Kaduna we discovered that the drum plant is a money spinner and it can work for an hour producing about 120 drums, and that is about 7,000. When you calculate it for a day and 25 days in a month, that can generate almost 1.7billion.
And so when you calculate this for 12 months, that is huge money and that is just for a section. So government need to put back money to re activate this area and the same thing is expected in Worri refinery which petrochemical plant and was abandoned and same goes to Port-Harcourt refinery.
For us in labour the job security of our members is paramount to us. For instance that we have ministers today, before they go to office, they are comfortable and if there is any rumour of cabinet reshuffle, you see them running up and down to save their job. So if they can be doing that, we should not fold our hands and let our members go because by the time they sell all refineries, the first thing is to fix the drum and lay off our members as if staff of NNPC are not ready to work. They are competent, committed and are ready to work, provided there is a level playing field, no political interference, sincerity, honesty from the people in charge of managing the oil and gas sector.
