27 September 2008
Oil and gas workers today described the planned sale of the Nigeria Gas Company and the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company as a "defective step. Addressing newsmen in Lagos , the National President of PENGASSAN, Mr Babatunde Ogun, urged the Federal Government to retrace its step.
"The action will fan the waning embers of adversarial relationship between the Bureau for Private Enterprises (BPE) and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC)," Ogun warned. He urged the BPE to do away with its privatis-ation agenda and integrate "whatever programmes it may have in the new policy initiatives of the Federal Government".
"We note with displeasure the attempt by BPE to derail the new policy direction of the present administration toward restructuring the NNPC and its subsidiaries in line with global practice," he said.
The unionist urged stakeholders in the oil sector to prevail on the BPE to drop the planned sale in the interest of the economy. "This is not the time to unnecessarily heat up the Nigerian polity or derail the reform agenda of Mr President," he said.
Ogun advised prospective buyers of the companies to steer clear in the interest of their investments, saying that oil workers would resist the sale. He threatened that NUPENG and PENGASSAN would take appropriate actions against the BPE and National Council on Privatisation (NCP), if they went ahead. (NAN)
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