About 5,000 refinery, steel workers receive salaries despite zero production
• Ajaokuta gulps N2bn yearly on salaries without producing steel • Workers are busy not idle, says Osifo • ‘ Sacking workers will increase unemployment rate’
DESPITE producing nothing and adding zero value to the nation’s economy, the Federal Government has continued to pay the salaries of about 5,000 workers operating in the nation’s ailing refineries and Ajaokuta Steel Complex.
With 1,898 staff strength, the refineries’ workers represent about 28.7 per cent of Nigerian National Petro
leum Corporation ( NNPC) group’s total workforce domiciled at the Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
The Guardiangathered that while 758 workers operate at the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company ( KRPC), the Port Harcourt Refining Company ( PHRC) has 655, while Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company ( WRPC) has 485 staff.
Though details of the workers’ emoluments are yet to be ascertained, the government has been incurring huge costs to keep the workers operating at the wasting assets.
Similar to the refineries is the stalled Ajaokuta steel plant located in Kogi State, with estimated staff strength of 3,000.
While successive governments have plunged about $ 8 billion into the complex since 1979, the Federal Government has been spending N2 billion on payment of staff salaries every year for not producing. The $ 8 billion structural investment has never produced a single bar of steel since reaching 98 per cent completion as far back as 1994.
Some experts have said that keeping most of the workers employed for doing nothing does not contribute anything significant to the economy and to their professional development.
According to them, it is a waste of scarce resources and unsustainable at a time government is in dire need of money to fund its budget.
Chairman and Managing Director of Energy Services Limited, Sunny Onuesoke, after visiting the plant earlier in the year, lamented that the FG has been wasting the huge sum of N2 billion for payment of staff salaries every year for doing nothing. He queried why the government keeps promoting and paying staff salaries and pension for doing nothing.
More so, official figures compiled from NNPC’S operation reports showed the four refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day ( bpd) stopped producing crude in March 2019. Kaduna refinery, the worst performer, has not received or processed crude since 2017, while Warri refinery stopped in June 2019.
The report by NNPC further showed that the refineries lost N123.25 billion between January and October 2019; while KRPC posted a loss of N49.3 billion, PHRC and WRPC lost N36.7 billion and N37.24 billion respectively.
Findings showed that in the past five years, about N1.47 trillion was spent by the Federal Government on maintaining, revamping and running its three moribund refineries between 2015 and 2020.
The NNPC also incurred a loss of N473.3 billion in operating the refineries between January 2015 and February 2021 operating the three refineries, as claimed in a report by SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical and socioeconomic research firm.
The report, titled ‘ Nigeria’s moribund refineries’, said Nigeria’s refineries had become a costly pastime, adding that they have been unproductive since July 2019 despite the huge costs of maintaining them.
“In that time, only 6.73 per cent of their capacity has been utilised on average. In fact, none of the three refineries has produced a drop of refined petrol since July 2019, raking up over N185 billion in losses,” it added.
In their separate reactions on why government has continued to keep the workers despite the refineries producing zero oil and agitation for the refineries to be privatised, president of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria ( PENGASSAN), Festus Osifo, said the refineries, being a national asset, had not worked because of many issues, among which is, the lack of will from government.
On the workers receiving salaries as at when due for doing nothing while the refineries remain idle, Osifo said: “There is some maintenance you have to keep doing. You won’t just abandon the refineries 100 per cent. If not, the money that would have been expended in fixing the refineries would have been much more than what was announced. But with those little maintenance that the employees have been undertaking, the figure announced have remained like that, if not it would have been more.”
He said it was not really the fault of the workers as they had agitated that the government should give them the tools to work and to maintain the refineries, but it fell on deaf ears. “If you employ me to work for you, you have to give me the tools to work. At the refineries, I have interacted with the workers, we have excellent people with good skills set, capacity and com
many as a solution requires massive capital investments and is difficult to sustain.
MAKH National President, Alhaji Bello Bodejo, who addressed a press conference in Abuja yesterday, expressed concerns that Fulani pastoralists have become endangered in Nigeria due to ethnic profiling that has resulted in violence by local communities.
He called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to stop the implementation of the anti- open grazing laws in the states, particularly in the south, saying it hasn’t and will not solve the herder- farmer crisis.
“Benue State is a good example. Has there been peace in Benue since the enactment and implementation of the law in the state? The governor, Samuel Ortom, only succeeded in turning his people against Fulani pastoralists and also using state- sponsored militia groups to unleash terror on our people. We advise him to withdraw the law and tender an unreserved apology to our people,” Bodejo stated. H OWEVER, many Nigerians and groups have flayed Miyetti Allah for calling on President Buhari to stop Southern governors from implementing the anti- open grazing laws.
Among them are Prof. Banji Akintoye, Dr. Yemi Farounbi, a former Speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Dr. Akin Onigbinde ( SAN); and the Director- General of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria ( FAWN) Commission, Mr. Seye Oyeleye.
Prof. Akintoye said: “They are jesters for making such a call. The Federal Government does not have any power over land. The power to administer land belongs to the state governments. The Land Use Act vests power over land on the governors. On what ground are they making that call? They tried the same thing with Amotekun corps, they failed because the will of the people prevailed. On this matter, the will of the people will still prevail.
“President Muhammadu Buhari must remember that he cannot be president forever. Some people were there before him. Whatever he does today will become history tomorrow.”
Ex- Oyo Speaker, Onigbinde said the group does not have any constitutional power to make that call. “Courts are constitutional institutions like the NASS and the Presidency, and all should exercise its powers in accordance with the law. The NASS cannot review judgment of courts, or prevent its enforcement. It can only make new legislations or amend existing laws following constitutional due process.
“The remedy available to any proper parties in a dispute before a court, who is dissatisfied with the outcome of the adjudication is to appeal it. Miyetti Allah is not on record to be a party to the dispute that threw up the court judgment, and cannot complain about the outcome in any appeal. No socio- cultural organisation such as Miyetti Allah can seek to use the instrument of state, like NASS or the Presidency to realise its own agenda.”
The Director- general of DAWN Commission, Mr. Seye Oyeleye, said Miyetti Allah is being unfair to the people and governments of the South.
The DG pointed out that Nigeria is not a military state where the President could just make a pronouncement, emphasising that the Land Use Act vests the ownership of land on the state governors.