We don’t need privatisation of refineries, but efficient management of refineries, depots —Korodo

Alhaji Tokunbo Korodo is the South West Chairman of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (nupeng). In this interview by OLATUNDE DODONDAWA, he expresses his views on why labour will always oppose privatisation of public enterprises. 

What’s your view on the approval by the senate of private public partnership for the refineries?

I would say that NUPENG has no stand yet. We have summoned the National Executive Council meeting where we will deliberate on it and hence we probably take position on that. Any position, policy or programme that is anti-workers will surely be resisted because we are yet to know the full component of that scheme and if it is the one that is going to affect the workforce, we will surely resist and if possible give a showdown on that. But don’t let me pre-empt the outcome of the meeting summoned towards the end of this month. So everybody has started preparing towards the meeting.

Why is the union always in opposition to privatisation?

Yes! If you look critically into the privatisation policy of goverment, they don’t put into consideration the plight of workers despite the challenges of capitalisation, and the few ones that have one employment or the other tend to lose their jobs when privatisation process is engineered. And when government is making such arrangement, the usual mistake is that a tripartite meeting is always non-existent. A tripartite meeting is a stakeholders’ meeting where the union will also contribute its own views before an agreement is reached. That is why people look at us that we always oppose such policy. Any policy that has no human face needs to be resisted by a genuine and reliable labour movement because injury to one is injury to all. When a worker is sacked, certainly about 10 dependants will be adversely affected and hence we don’t take it easy or we find it uncomfortable if such policy is being put in place.

The Dangote refinery is expected to come on stream by 2019, don’t you think that private investors will run our refineries better than government?

Well, This is a one-man business and it is a welcome development to have a Nigerian who volunteered to build into this vision and all hands must be on deck to encourage him. Coming back to your questions you know the mentality of Nigerian government officials, especially the corruption that has been killing or has eaten deep into our socio-economic system has not made it easy for government’s depot to be functional and that is why we are not comfortable most of the time.

You see. If it is privately owned refinery, such person is in the business for profitability and that person will continue to maintain the refinery periodically unlike that of government. Government will give approval for turnaround maintenance but such fund would be diverted or nobody would even think of doing the turnaround maintenance until there is a pack-off or deficiency before they start running helter skelter to find a way of mending it.

In fairness, anyone that belongs to the private sector should be handled by the private investors. But we should avoid the outright sale of government’s property. For me, I don’t think there is a problem with any partnering process that will not make the government sell its birthright. Most importantly, such partnership must not lead to job loss. If you can recall what happened to Kaduna refinery during Obasanjo’s administration, refinery was sold without the knowledge of the workers. But when it came to our notice, we resisted it and fought government hands down before they were able to reverse it. The amazing part was that the refinery has no problem before it was disposed. The only challenge it had was crude oil due to the Niger delta crisis whereby they were unable to pump crude through the pipeline to the refinery in Kaduna. Government ought not to have forged ahead with the disposal. But we give thanks to God that we have more than one refinery that belong to the government.

What we need is professionalism and efficiency of depot. Despite the huge amount the government have sunk into revamping the refinery and if that one can take care of our local consumption, it will be better because Alhaji Dangote had once said that his business will not be limited to Nigeria alone and that foreign countries can come around to buy and consequently saying it is going to be competitive. Therefore, Nigeria should not rely solely on the fact that there is Danone refineries and go to bed.  We should make sure that there are refineries in the country to complement that of the Dangote refinery.

The national assembly recently passed the Petroleum Industry Bill, whats your view on its impact on the oil and gas sector?

The truth is that the full bill has not been passed yet. They only passed one-third of the bill. We don’t want to cry more than the bereaved. We want a situation whereby when the total bill is released, we will peruse. This is because there was a time when different versions of the petroleum industry bill were being discussed, it became a big challenge. We had government faction, stakeholders’ faction and it got to a stage we also created Labour faction. We had Labour faction when all was harmonised. There was a seminar we held in Calabar where all the Labour leaders screened the document and were able to come out with a position because any area that is going to affect workers, we must rise up to the occasion. So, for the one the senate just passed, we have not seen whether good or bad yet. When, we see the total version of the bill, we will know whether it is truly it is anti-labour or pro-labour.