Victor Ahiuma-Young
20 September 2006
interview
LAST week, the nation's Petroleum and Gas sector was paralysed for two days by workers in the sector under the aegis of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and its Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) protest the increasing attacks on oil workers and installations which has claimed the life of the Community Liaison Officer (CLO) of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Mr. Nelson Ujeya. amongst other things.
The strike action was actually slated to last for three days but after marathon meeting with government officers between Wednesday and Thursday (last week), the action was suspended. Though, there were other reasons for the strike, only the violence in Niger-Delta appeared to have been amplified. However, two days before the commencement of the strike, PENGASSAN President, Comrade Peter Esele and some officials of the association were on a courtesy visit to Vanguard Corporate Head Office in Lagos and he spoke on crisis in the Niger- Delta region and other issues in the sector.
Apart from the increasing violence in the Niger-Delta region, which unfortunately claimed the life of one of your members, Comrade Nelson Ujeya, we understand you have other grievances. What are those grievances?
Yes, it true. there are other grievances. One of such grievances we have to grind with this government is the issue of Eleme Petrol-Chemical company in Eleme in Port Harcourt. That plant was sold for $226 million to Indorama Petrolchem. The Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) told us Indorama has a track records of managing several similar plants. We went ahead to do our personal investigations and found out that Indorama Petrolchem is a three-year-old company. Indorama Petrolchem was registered in Thailand. We have the registration number and other records about the company. Not only that, out of the $226 million, they have only paid 30 per cent out of 75 per cent and BPE handed over that national asset to them. The plant BPE said has a liability of $336 million dollars and the Federal Government decided to absorbe that. In essence, the government just dashed the plant to Indorama. You do not need to be a business man to know the implication of that. What is happening is that they want the plant to be on steam and use the money generated from the plant to pay.
We are saying that it is not accepted. People have said why are we not concentrating our efforts on core labour issues? Of course, we have done that. None of our members will lose his or her job in the process. We have over one thousand members and none of them will lose his or her job because of that. We have been able to negotiate a good package for those who want to leave . But above that, we have a social responsibility to the Nigerian people. One of such social responsibilities is to bring this unwholesome practice to the Nigerian public for them to know that this is what is happening. As we are talking, they have a sort of champ there, almost 200 Indians waiting to take over Nigerian jobs. They have been given go ahead, their expatriate quota has no limitation. We have been crying against expatriate quota abuses which is so rampant in the industry.
The third point is the issue of Autonomy for the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). We have asked several time what will Nigeria lose if the DPR is given autonomy? Nigeria will lose nothing, rather, the nation stands to gain several things if DPR has autonomy. The problem is that there are vested interests who benefit from the fact that DPR lacks autonomy. Take for example, I am regulator and I am supposed to come and visit Vanguard Media to enure that Vanguard does its business in accordance with the laws of the country. But before I am able to visit Vanguard, Vanguard will provide my transportation, accommodation, feeding and other logistics. The result of my visit or inspection is better imagined that said. As we speak, DPR depends on whatever Shell which DPR ought to regulate, says this is the amount of crude that we are producing, that is it. Where are the checks and balances? If a DPR man is coming to visit a company on inspection, the company will have to provide transport, accommodation, feeding and other logistics. Tell me how you will expect an objective inspection and report from such a man? This country spent huge amount of tax payers' money on Oil and Gas Industry Committee (OGIC) report, to reform the industry, the report has been dumped somewhere. In fact, by law, DPR does not exist.
What we have by law is Petroleum Inspectorate Commission (PIC). It was when military government especially under Ibrahim Babangida and co took over government and then they started giving different names. Suddenly, we started hearing DPR. By law it is PIC. What we are saying now is give the department autonomy and equip it to do its jobs. DPR has no tools to work. As we are talking, the gratuities of workers who are about to retire in the department, the department cannot even fund their retirement. We are talking about N700million. The pension for people there are also on the line. Do you think if NAFDAC has no autonomy, the agency would be able to do what it is doing under Professor Dora Akunyili? What about NCC? We see how these agencies are functioning.
Why has government refused to grant an agency in the nation's economic nerve centre an autonomy? It got to a level that Senator Brigidi was so frustrated that he decided to go solo to see if there could be a way forward after several complaints from us and he saw the reasons why autonomy should be granted to DPR. Since government has failed to present the OGIC report to the National Assembly for legislation. As it, there is no way DPR can function like its peers all over the world without autonomy. Some people just want to continue to hold the autonomy down for personal interest against national interest. The current regime in DPR, the only thing that concerns it is hawking oil licences, nothing more. The most painful aspect of all theses is that, we seem to have people who are leading us that do not believe in Nigerians.
Anything that comes from outside the shores of this country is what they believe in. If you do not believe in us as citizens, we also should not believe in you as a leader. So, let us go outside and bring George Bush or Tony Blair to be our leader here. Leaders should be able to create enabling environment for people to dream and excel. If things continue the way they are going which of course, it is in favour of those who do not believe in due process, the nation will be the loser. We support government anti-corruption and we want to help them, that is why we are bringing Eleme Petrol-Chemical to the fore. Part of our support for the anti-corruption crusade is for the government to please look into the sale of Eleme Petrol-Chemical.
Another issue that is agitating our mind is the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI). The institute was established to supply middle manpower to the oil and gas industry. In other parts of the world where there are oil, there are institutes like PTI, specialised institutes. When PTI was functional, not the way it is now, when government was not involved, it was funded by the multi-nationals and the NNPC. What was happening was that, if you have a company and you want your workers to be trained along specialized line, you send them to PTI. There, they are given practical knowledge for them to be more effective in your organisation.
The government woke up one day and asked National Board of Technical Education (NBTE) to come and accredit the institute. How can you accredit something you do not know. Immediately after that, the multi-nationals started withdrawing gradually. The institute started awarding Diploma and what have you and they started introducing all kinds of courses to the extent that I shall not be surprised if Philosophy is introduced there. The institute now lost focus. As we speak now, if you are a Nigerian graduate from Nigerian University, you cannot just get into Shell to work. You have to go to Shell Training School to spend one year. It is not even automatic that you will be given a job after the training. You have to take their test, if you pass, you are then sent to the school. The fact that you attend the training school is not a guarantee that you will be offered employment. They believe that what you went to school to do is just theory and not the practical knowledge. This vacuum was what the institute was providing. Now government said they want to convert it to a campus of the University of Benin.
The problems in the University of Benin, the government has not even solved half of them, why adding more? We told government that what is needed is for PTI to be upgraded and funded. Initially, we were able to get Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) to make commitment that it would spend about N4billion and it got in touch with an institute in United Kingdom to raise the standard of the school. All of a sudden, when this Niger-Delta crisis escalated and they started playing politics again, President Obasanjo announced that instead of building a different federal university in Delta State, the government would convert PTI to a campus of University of Benin. Yes, we agreed that there are issues in PTI that need to be addressed, but do we all have the time to take easy road that would not benefit us? We know what divers that are coming from America and Europe earn and we also know what local divers earn. Divers are part of the training done in PTI. We told them that if you want to have managers, you can have one or two. But a roster-about for a rig, you can have more than 20.
These are people who move about in the rigs supplying things needed in the rigs and they do not have to be highly skilled. This is also part of the training done in PTI. You talk about welders, panel beaters, crane operators and the rest which have now being taking over by the expatriates receiving scandalous salaries in the sector, PTI trains all these vocations. If you talk about creating employment for people in the Niger-Delta, these areas we expected the government to explore. Today, the crane operators in the rigs are Indians and Filipinos. In the rigs today, the cooks, security guards, nurses, clerks, office assistants and the rest you see in Nigerian rigs are expatriates. In the upstream, it is worse to the extent that even those that dress the beds are expatriates. When you ask, they will tell you that they are engineers. We have done everything to avoid this crisis. We have reached out to Immigration to help, but to no avail. We just resolved that things cannot continue to be like this.
Who is to be blamed for all these?
It is government of course. Even before that, let me make one important point here. We, as oil workers, have found out after checking that our taxes on a monthly basis, is over N5 billion in the Niger-Delta region. That is PENGASSAN and NUPENG. On the average, we pay about $5millon dollars. Shell staff alone pay about N720 million every month in Rivers State. If you look at it, that is equal to federal allocation to some states. What are these governments doing with these monies?
One of the issues we are raising is that those who are responsible for the kidnapping and hostage takings, they are known to the government. We believe that if government want to apprehend them, the government can. We also felt that Nigerians are becoming so docile and we are not asking questions any more. Because of that we asked the companies to send our tax figures. From there we have been able to get a rough figure of the tax we pay. Everybody has been putting attention on federal government. These states governments, what are they doing. We also want to bring pressures on the states. They know talk about stakeholders' meeting. We were the first to write to President Obasanjo on the need to convey a stakeholders' meeting before the problems in the Niger Delta degenerate. This was as early as February 18. When they eventually conveyed the stakeholders' meeting, we were not even invited because they know we would tell them what they do not want to hear.
If you hear how much paid by these oil companies to Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC) as part of their contributions stipulated by the law, you will be shocked. What we are doing is to make everybody to key in, focus on what is happening in Niger Delta. People talk about the terrain being difficult, take the case of Rivers state alone, let say they take the N720million paid by SPDC workers alone as tax to be used for the provision of portable water. Are you telling me that in one year, everybody in the state would not get access to portable drinking water? Where are all these money going? The NNDC has a master plan. What are they doing with the money given to NNDC? If they tell us they construct A B C road for this and that amount, we can verify the claims by comparing the money with other places that have such terrain. There are places where some of these things can be got. The United Nations for example, has an international standard for road construction.
What do you expect from government in wake of all these?
We expect the government at all levels to tackle the issue of corruption. We need to see that the money meant for the areas is judiciously utilised for the area. The NNDC is a government agency. Take for example, how would you feel, I work in a platform, for 24 hours every day, there is no power interruption and there is uninterrupted portable water supply. But opposite or nearby, you do not have any of these. The only thing you are is that you are a fisherman. Because of oil exploration, your only means of livelihood which is fishing, the rivers have been polluted that you can not even fish again. People say the multinationals come and they do what they do.
Yes, I tell you if your government is not responsive, nothing positive will change. All over the world, politicians are the same. The difference is how you enforce your laws. We have beautiful laws that talk about environment. The laws are not enforced. You earlier asked who is to be blamed? Take for instance, we took a case to the Ministry of Labour that a platform has been existing for three years without a nurse on board. When the case came up, ministry officials were taking about the need to give the company additional four weeks. I told them that the ministry has no such power. What we are saying is statutory and we are saying that there should be a nurse on that platform. Government should enforce all the relevant laws. Government has to develop the Niger Delta The area needs infrastructurare. Our government is the major problem.
They are not doing what they ought to do. It is not the oil companies. A company has what is known as social responsibility. The company can decide what it wants to do. The government ask the companies to pay tax and they paid, they asked for royalties they paid. What else are you asking for? Besides that, they have packages for all the traditional heads and royal fathers. The day they do not pay the packages to the royal fathers they are in trouble. These are some of the problems in the Niger Delta and before you are able to create attitudinal change, the governments of these states must be involved. All the funds must be deployed to make life better for people living in the area.
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