Dangote-Oil Workers’ Row: Federal Government Says 650,000 bpd Refinery Must Be Protected

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The national authorities has cautioned the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and absorption of the Dangote Refinery against allowing their ongoing concern quality to escalate, informing that immoderate disruption to the operations of the multibillion-dollar installation could person dire implications for the nationalist economy.

Speaking astatine the 31st Nigerian Economic Summit connected Monday, successful Abuja, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the refinery arsenic a “national treasure” that indispensable beryllium protected done dialog and communal knowing alternatively than confrontation.

Tinubu, represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, said, “Aliko Dangote is not an individual; helium is an institution. We indispensable beryllium agreed successful protecting Nigeria’s economical power,” Shettima said successful his address. “If helium had invested $10 cardinal successful Microsoft, Amazon, oregon Google, helium would astir apt beryllium worthy $78 cardinal today. But helium chose to put successful this country, and we indispensable support that concern arsenic a generational asset.”

The President’s remarks came amid heightened hostility betwixt PENGASSAN and Dangote Industries Limited, operators of Africa’s largest lipid refinery successful Lekki, Lagos. The national has accused the institution of unfair labour practices, including attempts to casualise immoderate categories of workers, inadequate payment provisions, and non-recognition of the union’s afloat practice rights.
In response, Dangote Industries has maintained that it remains committed to just labour standards, describing the quality arsenic a misunderstanding already being addressed done engagement with applicable stakeholders, including the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
In his intervention, Shettima appealed to some parties to enactment with restraint and patriotism, emphasising that the refinery represents a strategical nationalist concern susceptible of transforming Nigeria’s vigor landscape, creating thousands of jobs, and strengthening the naira done reduced substance import dependence.

“I privation to telephone for caution, retrospection, and a deeper consciousness of patriotism from some the labour and the organised backstage sector,” the VP said. “You bash not beryllium a constituent by endangering a nationalist concern that holds the cardinal to our concern future.”

He urged PENGASSAN to proceed exploring dialog and organization channels alternatively than confrontation, noting that concern bid is indispensable to sustaining capitalist assurance and achieving nationalist economical recovery.

“Nigeria and each Nigerians beryllium it a work to generously protect, promote, and sphere the refinery,” helium added. “This is not conscionable astir 1 company—it is astir the aboriginal of our economy.”
Shettima echoed the Tinubu administration’s broader economical doctrine of strengthening collaboration betwixt government, labour, and the backstage assemblage to thrust sustainable growth. He said the national authorities was deliberately taking a much nonstop involvement successful marketplace dynamics to region bureaucratic barriers and amended the concern environment.

“In the involvement of improving concern options and economical growth, the authorities is present bypassing what utilized to beryllium protocols to instrumentality much than a passing involvement successful the market,” helium explained.

Meanwhile, the national authorities has acceptable an ambitious five-year people to destruct poverty, which has much than doubled since the existent medication introduced harsh policies that person thrown much radical into the poorness cycle.

Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, said the contiguous medication is “optimistic that by 2030, we volition person eliminated and reduced multidimensional poorness to the nearest minimum.”

According to the World Bank, poorness among Nigeria’s agrarian dwellers surged to a worrying 75.5 per cent, underscoring increasing inequality and terrible economical hardship nationwide. The curate said the authorities is besides determined to heighten macroeconomic predictability and instrumentality reforms that would presumption Nigeria for semipermanent prosperity.

However, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group has said industrialisation and reaching the $1 trillion system people tin lone beryllium achieved done deliberate argumentation calibration and the instauration of macroeconomic stability, wherever businesses tin plan. “There is inactive enactment to beryllium done. The involvement complaint contiguous does not promote investment,” the vice president of the NESG, Omoboyede Olusanya, said astatine the event.

“We request to person excess cultivation production, we request infrastructure development. We request to get concern and superior mobilisation. We request to get backstage assemblage backing by ensuring derisking, concern protection, and security,” helium said portion besides calling for a deliberate measurement towards ensuring quality superior development.

The NESG called for an u...

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