The Refinery Of Reason And Respect

In Nigeria’s agelong past of concern melodrama, fewer acts person drawn arsenic overmuch attraction arsenic the caller standoff betwixt Dangote Refinery and the lipid workers’ unions — PENGASSAN and NUPENG. It had everything that makes a bully nationalist soap: suspicion, posturing, and conscionable capable misunderstanding to marque some sides excavation in. Now, aft overmuch sound and negotiation, they look to person reached what diplomats would telephone a compromise — which, successful Nigeria, usually means everyone is arsenic unhappy but pretending to beryllium relieved.

Before the commentariat sharpen their hashtags, it’s important to retrieve what this quality is truly about. It’s not a morality play betwixt bully capitalists and atrocious unions, nor a conflict betwixt “patriotic entrepreneurs” and “lazy workers.” It is the old, eternal question of however power, production, and radical indispensable coexist erstwhile ambition meets reality.

Unions exist, ontologically and functionally, to support the interests of their members — not to tally refineries, dictate macroeconomic policy, oregon erstwhile authorities should committee turnaround maintenance. They are not politicians oregon managers of the NNPC. Their work is to bargain collectively wherever idiosyncratic workers would different beg individually. To scold them for not fixing Nigeria’s refineries is to blasted the occurrence brigade for the architect’s atrocious design. They didn’t determination the concrete; they lone amusement up erstwhile fume starts rising.
And yet, to recognize this standoff, 1 indispensable look beyond the regular quality and into the deeper patterns of governmental economy. For each concern quality is simply a reflection of larger forces — the friction betwixt capital’s thrust for power and labour’s request for dignity.

Lessons from Coal, Steel, and Common Sense

History, that aged economist with the longest memory, has seen this movie before. In 1984, Britain’s ember miners went to warfare — not with each other, but with their government. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought to adjacent unprofitable pits and crush what she saw arsenic militant unions. The miners, led by Arthur Scargill, saw it arsenic an existential conflict for their communities. Neither broadside blinked. The result? The authorities “won,” but full towns successful Northern England mislaid everything. Jobs vanished, societal cloth tore, and the once-mighty British mining manufacture became a depository piece. It was a textbook win-lose that rapidly turned into a lose-lose.

Contrast this with post-war Germany, wherever alternatively of annihilating labour, industrialists and unions struck a societal pact known arsenic Mitbestimmung — co-determination. Workers sat connected institution boards, shared successful profits, and helped signifier decisions. It wasn’t socialist idealism; it was pragmatic capitalism. The result was the “German miracle” — stability, productivity, and prosperity built not connected struggle but connected cooperation.

Economic past teaches an uncomfortable truth: erstwhile 1 broadside successful the capital-labour equation “wins” absolutely, the system loses eventually. Labour crushed leads to societal unrest; superior stifled leads to stagnation. The lone victories that past are those negotiated with humility and foresight.
Dangote Refinery, a task of monumental ambition, carries the aforesaid lessons. It is not conscionable alloy and pipes; it is simply a awesome of anticipation — the content that Nigeria tin yet industrialize, refine its ain crude, and halt hemorrhaging overseas exchange. Yet ambition unsocial does not inoculate against hubris. A refinery, nevertheless modern, tin grind to a halt if its radical consciousness alienated oregon undervalued. Even machines respond amended erstwhile the humans operating them judge they matter.

Of Capitalists, Workers, and the Dance of Survival

It’s casual to caricature labour leaders arsenic obstinate and absorption arsenic heartless, but economics is seldom truthful binary. Both sides run wrong constraints. Management worries astir efficiency, costs, and control; unions interest astir occupation security, welfare, and respect. The creation is delicate — excessively overmuch power and superior stifles trust, excessively overmuch militancy and labour scares investment.

Consider Henry Ford successful 1914. Faced with precocious turnover, helium doubled wages to the then-unthinkable $5 a day. The concern property called it madness. But Ford understood thing timeless: a well-paid, motivated idiosyncratic is not a cost; helium is simply a customer, a collaborator, and a root of stability. Productivity soared, turnover dropped, and Ford became a legend. His logic applies arsenic to modern refineries: treating workers arsenic partners, not pawns, is bully economics.

Unfortunately, some superior and labour sometimes hide their ain champion interests. Management often believes that subject unsocial drives productivity; unions occasionally mistake obstinacy for strength. When either broadside forgets that they are bound by shared surv...