The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has countered Vice President Kashim Shettima for describing the Dangote Group as a national asset.

A statement by the NLC president, Joe Ajaero on Tuesday said no company, regardless of size or influence, is above the country’s labour laws.

Ajaero described Shettima’s remarks as a national tragedy, warning that they could signal that wealth and political clout override legal protections for workers, potentially undermining labour rights in Africa’s largest economy.

The NLC boss also accused the Dangote Group of infringing on workers’ rights to freedom of association, including the right to join trade unions of their choice, as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution, the Labour Act, the Trade Union Act, and core International Labour Organisation conventions.

According to him, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, was fulfilling its mandate to protect members from exploitation and criticised attempts to portray union activity as sabotage or a threat to national interests.

Ajaero also called for stronger enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance, insisting that human capital, not corporations, is the nation’s true asset

“We state unequivocally to Vice President Shettima: No company, no matter how big, ‘strategic’, or well-connected, can operate outside the law or be bigger than Nigeria. If the Dangote Refinery is to be granted rights and privileges above the law, then the government must be prepared for the storms such injustice will inevitably unleash. There can be no peace without justice.

“The serial violations of the ideals of decent work are a ticking time bomb,” Ajaero said.

“We will mobilise, we will organise, and we will fight back. There are no sacred cows,” he warned.

This comes after the sacking of roughly 800 workers at the Dangote Refinery after they joined PENGASSAN.

Ekwutosblog recalls that Shettima publicly condemned the industrial action as a minor labour dispute that should not hold Nigeria to ransom, stressing the refinery’s critical role in the economy.

The Vice President equally commended billionaire industrialist, Aliko Dangote for his investment in Nigeria and called for industrial harmony to maintain investor confidence.

It could also be recalled that the Federal Government’s intervention resulted to a conciliatory agreement under which the dismissed workers were reinstated, the strike suspended, and operations restored.

Location: Lagos, Nigeria.
Date: Circa January 1962.

Photographer/Source: Pix/Michael Ochs Archives.
Significance: The image captures the era of Kingsway Stores, which symbolized modern and cosmopolitan life in West Africa in the early 1960s.
About Kingsway Stores

Origins: The chain began as Lever’s Stores in 1922, evolving through Opobo Stores Ltd before becoming Kingsway Stores Ltd in 1947.

Expansion: The first store in Nigeria opened in Lagos in 1948, followed by others in cities like Freetown, Accra, Ibadan, and Port Harcourt.

Impact: Kingsway Stores represented a modern, western-style shopping experience, with departments for various goods, and were a popular shopping destination for Nigerians.

President Bola Tinubu is scheduled to commission the $400m Otakikpo Onshore Crude Oil Export Terminal in Rivers State on October 8, the first new crude export facility to be built in Nigeria in over 50 years.

The facility, developed by Green Energy International Limited, operators of the Otakikpo field in OML 11, Ikuru town, Andoni Local Government Area of Rivers State, is the first wholly indigenous onshore terminal built in Nigeria. The last such facility, the Forcados Terminal, was commissioned in 1971.

The inauguration is expected to attract top government officials, including the Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, and key stakeholders across the oil and gas sector.

The Otakikpo terminal is expected to serve as a lifeline to more than 40 stranded oil fields by providing a reliable evacuation outlet, potentially unlocking millions of barrels of crude previously trapped underground.

With an initial storage capacity of 750,000 barrels, expandable to three million barrels, and a loading capacity of 360,000 barrels per day, the facility is also projected to reduce production costs for indigenous producers significantly.

Chairman and Chief Executive of GEIL, Professor Anthony Adegbulugbe, described the terminal as a “game-changing national infrastructure.”

“What we have achieved here is not just a storage solution, but a pathway for about 40 stranded oil fields to finally contribute to the economy,” Adegbulugbe said.

The commissioning underscores the Federal Government’s renewed efforts to restore investor confidence in Nigeria’s oil sector, which has struggled with declining production, pipeline vandalism, oil theft, and rising operational costs in recent years.