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NLC backs NUPENG in dispute with Dangote refinery
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has expressed unwavering support for the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) amid their ongoing conflict with Dangote Refinery concerning fuel distribution.
In a statement dated Saturday and signed by NLC president Comrade Joe Ajaero, the Congress asserted that Nigerian workers must not be “sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed,” emphasizing that their solidarity with NUPENG is “not negotiable.”
The dispute arose after NUPENG instructed its Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch to halt loading petroleum products from Dangote depots starting Monday, September 8.
READ ALSO: NUPENG threatens fuel loading halt over dispute with Dangote refinery
Central to the disagreement is the refinery’s reported policy preventing drivers employed for its 10,000 compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks from joining any trade union.
The NLC stated it had thoroughly reviewed NUPENG’s complaints and received additional grievances from other unions accusing Dangote of anti-union behavior, monopolistic tactics, and poor industrial relations.
It further alleged that the Dangote Group has been systematically violating workers’ constitutional rights to freedom of association by imposing “company unions” that weaken collective bargaining.
Labeling the situation as a direct assault on Nigerian workers, the Congress accused the refinery of exploitative labor practices, inadequate wages, casual employment, and favoring foreign workers over qualified Nigerians.
The NLC also claimed that instead of reducing costs, the Dangote monopoly exploits scarcity and distribution control to increase prices, worsening poverty and hardship.
“This is not industrialisation; it is economic sabotage. It is not nation-building; it is class robbery,” the statement declared. “What we are witnessing is the classic playbook of primitive capitalism, where workers are treated as slaves without voice or dignity.”
The Congress cited Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution, the Labour Act, and ILO Conventions 87 and 98, insisting that Dangote’s actions violate both national and international labor laws.
The NLC outlined several demands:
– The Federal Government must immediately summon Alhaji Aliko Dangote and associates to ensure compliance with labor laws and international standards.
– Dangote Group must end all anti-union and anti-worker practices.
– All Dangote Group companies, including the refinery, must be fully unionized.
– Nigerian workers, industrial unions, and state councils have been placed on high alert for potential nationwide action.
– Regulatory bodies, especially the Nigerian Midstream & Downstream Petroleum Authority, must intervene or risk complicity in the privatization of Nigeria’s energy sector and workforce exploitation.
– Nigerians should recognize that “this is not philanthropy, it is plunder; it is not development, it is dispossession and enslavement.”
The NLC stressed that the conflict extends beyond NUPENG, representing an attack on the entire labor movement.
“The attack on NUPENG is an attack on us all,” the statement read. “Our Constitution and international conventions guarantee our right to organise, collectively bargain, and defend our dignity at work. We will resist every attempt by the Dangote Group to roll back these rights.”
The Congress warned that if Dangote does not immediately cease its “anti-union and anti-people policies,” it will escalate its response.
“We warn that if Dangote continues on this reckless anti-union path, the NLC and its affiliates will move beyond words to action.
“We will confront this tyranny head-on until victory is secured for Nigerian workers and the Nigerian people,” the statement added.
“Our solidarity is not negotiable. We will fight because we must. The working class must not be sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed.”
Justice Muhammad Nuraddeen Bello of High Court sitting in Sokoto State has sentenced three men, including a foreign national, to death by hanging, after convicting them on charges bordering on terrorism and arms proliferation.
The convicts, Yusuf Muhammad (alias Sallau), a Nigerien; Jabbi Alhaji Yalle; and Kabiru Muhammad, were apprehended on 13th June, 2025, by the Department of State Services (DSS) Counter Terrorism Unit in connection with cross-border criminal activities bordering on arms trafficking and terrorism.
Bello, who found all three defendants guilty as charged and sentenced them to death by hanging, while also ordering the forfeiture of all monetary exhibits recovered from the convicts to the Federal Government, said: “The conviction is the latest in a series of successful prosecutions by the DSS in its sustained operations against terrorism and organised cross-border criminal networks across Nigeria.”
The sentencing is coming about two weeks after the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja sentenced each of the five suspects arrested on May 31, 2026, by the DSS for their involvement in the November 21, 2025, attack on St Mary’s Catholic School, Papiri, Niger State, to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Justice Binta Nyako, had handed down the judgment after the men, including two Nigeriens, pleaded guilty to all four terrorism-related charges, bordering on support for the commission of an act of terrorism, breaching both Section 16 of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, and the Firearms Act, were pressed against them.
According to Count One, the men were accused of jointly conspiring to assist a terrorist by agreeing and intentionally playing various roles towards conveying 15 AK 103 rifles as well as about 1,434 rounds of 7.62mm live ammunition from the Diffa region, Republic of Niger, to one Malam Ahmad, a member of the Boko Haram terrorist group based in Borgu, Niger State, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 26(1) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
Primate Elijah Ayodele, is on the verge of coughing out a whopping N10billion, if he fails to offer unrestrained apology to Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Governor of Kano State within the next 24 hours, and retract his claim that the former Minister of Defence is bidding his time to betray Peter Obi, to whom he is to contest the 2027 presidential election as a running mate.
Without doing so, the controversial cleric, should be ready for a major court battle with the vice-presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), the platform on which the pair is to contest the election.
In a letter indicating a legal action against Ayodele of the INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church over defamatory remarks, Kwankwaso, through Magaji Mato Ibrahim, SAN & Co., his lawyers demanded an immediate retraction and apology from the cleric over the allegations.
Details of the letter, dated June 11, and unveiled through the X platform of the legal team, was based on a viral video recorded during a live-streamed church service, where the preacher made allegations targeting Kwankwaso’s integrity as Peter Obi’s running mate under the NDC.
Quoting the cleric as stating: “KWANKWASO IS A FAKE TO OBI, KWANKWASO WILL BETRAY YOU. KWANKWASO HAS BEEN PAID TO BE VICE PRESIDENT TO OBI AMONG OTHER LIBELOUS COMMENTS WHILE PRETENDING TO BE A PREACHER,” the former governor said the comments were unprovoked, grossly unfounded, and carefully designed to create a rift within the ranks of the political party and its supporters.
Handing Ayodele a 24-hour ultimatum to publish a full and unequivocal retraction across all social media platforms and news outlets with the same prominence as the original video, they also demanded a written undertaking that he would cease and desist from making any further malicious statements against their client, warning that failure to comply, would lead to full legal actions.
The letter stated: “We shall claim substantial damages to the tune of Ten Billion Naira and cost of the action on a full indemnity basis amongst other reliefs.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday demanded the immediate end to the exportation of minerals from countries in Africa in their raw forms, which he said had led to massive exploitation of the continent.
The President, told member countries of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), a forum of Ministers in charge of Mining and Solid Minerals on the continent to speak with one voice to promote, collective interests, ensure value addition, and prevent the continent from becoming merely a source of raw materials for the rest of the world.
As the Grand Patron of the group, chaired by Dele Alake, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, gave the charge while receiving a delegation of AMSG in the State House, Tinubu told the delegation that the group had a critical role to play in strengthening Africa’s bargaining power in the global mineral market and ensuring that the continent derives maximum value from its natural resources.
His words: “ What we should do is avoid bureaucracy and deceit; we must put an end to exploitation. The rest of the world won’t mind if your country is a cesspit of dams and rubbish and excavates your raw materials without giving value.
“It is our responsibility to collaborate and cooperate to ensure that these metals and minerals bring value to us, bring technology to us, and we can do it. It is how much each country will put into the research, development and refinery. I don’t see reasons we cannot demand centralisation of that conversation somewhere on the continent. So why not utilise that in our research and development and knowledge-based economy to enhance the quality of life and bring prosperity to our people.”
Emphasising that Africa possessed enormous mineral wealth that should be strategically harnessed to drive industrialisation, create jobs and accelerate economic transformation across the continent, the President, said the era of exporting raw minerals without local processing and beneficiation must give way to a new model that encourages investment in local industries, technology transfer and the development of value chains that retain wealth within Africa.
Alake, who had earlier expressed gratitude to the President for his exemplary leadership under the Renewed Hope Agenda, said the gesture had shown support for Nigeria’s mineral sector, especially in the local value-addition and economic diversification drive, where artisanal miners are empowered.
He told the President: “You encouraged us to look at the focal point of the establishment of this group, which is to ensure that the African natural resources, especially with regards to minerals, critical matters, are localised, the beneficiation coming directly to Africans generally.
“You charged us that we should set our sails very high and ensure that local value addition is a pivot around which all the objectives of this organisation should revolve.
“So, sir, we have gone implemented your charge and we are quitted that today local value addition is reverberating all over Africa.”
He added that some member countries have gone ahead to ban the export of raw minerals.
He explained members of the body were in Abuja for the Fifth edition of the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit (AFNIS 2026), to push for a new continental approach to resource management and industrial development.
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