The unions had embarked on strike following the misinterpretation of the unbundling of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
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President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged to revamp the NNPC and rid it of corruption that multiple probes have said is endemic.
The opposition came just days after the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Ibe Kachukwu, made the plan public.
Kachikwu said Tuesday that NNPC was being restructured into key business units to return the it to profit as part of its ongoing reform.
According to him, the NNPC Act of 1977 has many provisions related to the structure and the operations of the corporation.
“I wouldn’t worry about that if two out of about 40 which includes non-OPEC members decides to scale out, perhaps we can still achieve the effect that we want”, Kachikwu said.
“What we have simply done is a reorganization”. We have five business entities focused on business: Upstream, Downstream, Refineries, Gas and Power that are there before.
“There is also Ventures that captures all our little companies that were not having proper stewardship”. The NNPC is still a whole.
The union scribe further explained that the union will not fold its hands and allow few privileged persons fragment NNPC into pieces without following due process, stressing that those planning to fragment NNPC into pieces under the cover of disengaging workers should know that job creation and job security are the change agenda of the current administration Nigerians voted for.
Kachikwu said between $250 and $500 million would be invested in the country’s refineries over the next 18 months “to keep them going optimally ” .
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The union scribe said that the legality, appropriateness and timelessness of the exercise is condemnable, adding that the union will not tolerate any disengagement of the union members under the guise of unbundling the NNPC.
