Ambassador Cajetan Akpan, a one-time National Secretary of Producers Forum of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers ( NUPENG), does not absolve government from casualisation of labour, describing it as cheating for someone to work in the oil company for 30 years without employment being regularised. Excerpts:
Ambassador Cajetan Akpan
Ambassador Cajetan Akpan is a young man from a humble beginning who rose to an enviable height by the special grave of God. I come from Ikot Akpandem village of Okon Clan in Eket local government area of Akwa Ibom State.
A holder of Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Management, I made second class upper in my B.SC in Criminology and Security studies. I have a professional diploma in Security Management and Operation. Because of my love for education, I had to go further to see how I can get myself grounded with the issues of life and that led me to do some professional courses like facility management and operations, Supply Chain and Logistics Management.
As we speak, I am the immediate past State Chairman of Corporate Institute of Risk and Safety Management if Nigeria. I happened to be a member of some quality professional bodies. I am a member, Institute of Industrial Safety and Security of Nigeria. Iam also a member of Corporate Institute of Risk and Safety Management if Nigeria.
On the recovery of pension irregularities in the company
I would not want to mention the amount of money, but I want to tell us that the company was able to sponsor us to every location that our workers were because as the branch chairman, my position covered the whole country- wherever we had the company. The only place we could not go which was not administrative positions was the offshore bases. But for every location within onshore, the company sponsored us to make these verifications. We went up to the insurance and pension fund administrators. We discovered that some of the monies deducted from workers’ salaries on monthly basis did not drop on their respective accounts. Those who were handling contracts then had criminal records and as expected, they devised means to defend themselves but we went deep and made sure that anomalies were corrected and people got their monies.
Number of casual staff In the payroll of Mobil Producing Nigeria then
This is a hydra-headed issue that I don’t know, up to date, if we could say that the issue is completely addressed. It is not. As a Chairman, I was covering more than a thousand workers as my members and all them were on contract. Your guess is as good s mine. We had a very few mian, confirmed staff.
On carrying staff along
There is something in leadership- you cannot give what you do not have. When I came on board, I realised that those who were there before me, looked at it as a way of making money, but I knew that the money you should make should be the money for the people. I came in from the tutelage of the then President of Nigeria Labour Congress, Adams Oshiohmole. He was the one that gave us the background of how the issues of unionism should be played and I left when I discovered that people were playing unionism of ‘injury to one is injury to another’ and not ‘injury to one is injury to all’. Because of where I came from and how I was taught to go about it, I did not find it comfortable and I had to leave and my leaving, I can say emphatically that, in that company, marked the death of the union.
My achievements As unionist
Cajetan Akpan is someone who has been an activist for some years and by the grace of God, I happened to find myself in the upstream sector of the oil and gas economy of Nigeria. I started as a unit secretary then in Grafen Enterprises Limited. I rose to become the branch secretary of Mobil Producing Nigeria contract arm and I held that position for 11 years. I found myself as the chairman of the same branch. During this period, I was able to liaise with the management of the company, in the spirit of win-win situation during negotiations and mediations to reinstate five out of 10 persons who were wrongfully disengaged from the company.
In that era, I lost three to death and three others were found wanting. I had been in several committees including the committee of ExxonMobil/Contract Workers and Union for Pension Verification. There, we found a lot of abnormalities- people made monies that they were not supposed to make. Such monies were recovered and the rightful owners got them back. In 2002, the Federal government and Labour Committee brought to the fore the issue casualization. We realised that it was cheating for someone to work for years while someone else was short-changing him up to three years.
People in the industry today work and do not have their regular employment. Everything is based on contract and we saw that that was killing Nigerians. You will realise that you have worked for 30 years, yet you do not have a take-home pay because of the fragmentation of your years of service. It was so bad that at times, a contract could be renewed for three months and what did a worker do with a three-month contract? So, we pressed hard on it and these issues were resolved. Again, I was called upon as the secretary of the casualisation committee where the then vice president, Atiku Abubakar represented the Federal government.
It was during my leadership that we were able to have a 21 per cent increment on workers’ salaries. It has never happened. It happened in my own tenure and that was the highest that anybody could have gotten. Again, in the producer’s forum that I was a secretary, I introduced this issue of quarterly meetings within us. Producer’s forum is an embodiment of 16 different branches of Shell Petroleum, Chevron, Mobil, Total, Agip Oil, and Pan Ocean oil. As producers, we had a whole lot of issues that would warrant industrial actions on regular basis, but when I came on board, I decided that we meet quarterly to discuss and find ways out of such issues and it was a good move.
It was then that we were able to discover that the first Petroleum Indutrial Bill (PIB) was lopsided and we said no, it could not be passed. I left the union and I do not know why it has still not been passed up till this moment. Again, during my tenure, my workers were able to live fine. A lot of them were able to build their houses, buy their cars, and send their children to schools. That was my best achievement because it cut across humanity. I became a role model to the oil and gas industry. My happiness is today, even if I do not have a car to drive, if I stand on the road, I will not wait for more than 15 minutes.
We did not push for the introduction to the bill but rather pushed for the inclusion and coverage of the entire oil and gas sector because we found out that it was lopsided and the benefits therein were not for the entire workers. Take for instance a family- father mother and children. Imagine someone comes up with something that will be in the interest of the father alone and the children are left like that. Who and who will be in the house when the father is out? It is the children and the wife.
On casualisation of labour in the oil industry
We saw that and said “no”, this must not happen. Go back and put your house in order because we saw within the oil and gas sector, we had so much casualisation. It is very alarming. I said so because I do not think it has been addressed by now. As long as the white paper that we had far back as 2002 that stated that any worker within the oil and gas sector who has served for a period of four years should be given a regular employment, has not been implemented, then there’s still problem. People have worked for between ten to 20 years and they are still service workers. Most of these workers cannot speak up because they are constantly threatened by their pay masters. These are people who are educationally low. The job is only what they use to feed and they can’t risk losing it.
Remember what George Orwell said in his famous book: Animal Farm, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than the others. It was understandable when we had the whites enslaving the blacks but now we are seeing the blacks enslaving the blacks. It is ridiculous.
Let me shock you- government is involved. From the day one of anybody coming into this office to handle any job, your mission must be spelt out nd scrutinised. Unfortunately, nobody is doing this. So, these people come in with the mentality of what they have because they have seen what is going on- more of manual labour and little of enjoyment. So you see a situation where some people are eating, driving the best cars and enjoying but the people who are working do not have what to even take them home.
Government is the number one culprit of casualisation. Secondly, those who are actually operating are capitalists. They come in to make their gains. If you give then more grounds to stand to make much money to the detriment of the people, definitely they will do it. Thirdly, the workers who see themselves as not fit. Education is key. It is only an enlightened fellow that will stand to tell you “look, this one is wrong.”
Return of the colonial masters to man oil industry
I cannot exactly say I want that but what I would rather advocate for is the re-engineering of the mind of a typical black man because we came of of the the slave-master syndrome and we are still carrying that. You cannot imagine when someone sees a friend or brother that has not eaten for days and if he has any money to give to such a person, it would be money to drink. He doesn’t think about you eating. By the time you keep giving someone money for drinks, over time he will become a drunk and that will lead him into crime and so we have what is going on in our society today.
My challenges as a unionist
A major challenge was the understanding of the management on what you portray and what you try to do. Management still see you as unionist of those days who were antagonists rather than people operating for the betterment of the entire organisation because without the union leaders, there will be no peace within the job sector. When you approach a management staff and tell them “this is what must be done”, they looked at you as someone who is asking for too much and that caused a whole lot of problems.
Besides, the workers themselves did not help matters. Even when you had few managers who came to appreciate what you are doing, the real people you were representing saw you as a criminal because the greatest challenges of man is the mind set. They would suspect your motives until they see the actual result. I had discovered something- your followers need information on where you want to go to and when you are back, they want to hear the result.
Regrets As a unionist
I can never have regrets about unionism because it was what brought me out to where I am and what I represent. I do not have any regrets whatsoever for being a unionist. If I have my way, I will continue leadership.
Role on relocation of MPN’s headquarters to Akwa Ibom State
It is the best thing that will happen to the state if we have the headquarters of Mobil down here. That issue is like robbing Peter to pay Paul. I know that we are losing a whole lot of money because of this. I may not be able to give you the correct figure. It is difficult for someone who is living in two houses to catch a thief. He knows at what times you would be in either of the houses so he calculates when to enter your house. So, it is very difficult to catch such a thief. And for them to keep the headquarters where it is they use our sons and daughters who cannot utter a word because that is where they eat from. If the headquarters comes down, a whole lot of people will have jobs and the government will earn money. This company is paying taxes to Lagos state government when actually they are operating here. The administrative block is taken to Lagos where everything is done and then what we see here are peanuts. There are levels of contracts that are not signed in Akwa Ibom State- they have to go to Lagos. All these are short-changing that are not supposed to be. I will say that the politics of bringing back the oil company headquarters to the state should stop and all hands should be on deck.
Payment of oil subsidy to petroleum marketers
I remember vividly well before our present president (President Buhari) came on board, when issue of subsidy was up, he said it was a fraud and that anybody that talks about subsidy is a criminal. For us to have subsidy in his tenure, there is a problem somewhere and it needs to be addressed.
Deregulation of the downstream sector
In those days that we were there, issue of deregulation was a struggle. The government had come up to say that they wanted to sell off certain propertied to ensure that the deregulation works and at that time in the union, we said “no”. One of such places that were to be sold was the National Theatre, Lagos. When you get to that place, you will see the edifice; it should be a thing of pride to any nation. But government wanted to sell it off but we rose to say “no, bring in the investors let us partner them and things will go on smoothly other than outrightly selling it”. I prefer partnering. You come into my country to do business, you have a percentage and I have a percentage. It is what I give to you as the landlord is what you abide by.
Refining Nigeria’s crude oil outside the country
It is capital flight. Till tomorrow, I will stand against it. There is no reason why we should not have refineries in Nigeria to refine our products. We are at a loss refining our crude oil outside the country because it is only PMS that comes back to us. What about the grease, the engine oil, or even the kerosene? These at all found in fractional distillation. This is really not fair. Look at the market, most products need petroleum products to be produced. They will use our crude oil to do all these things and we would still go back to import those things. The way forward is to make all our refineries functional. As a matter of fact, states should begin to build, even if it is a mini-refinery that would address this issue.
Sharing of oil blocks amongst people in the non-oil producing states in the country to the detriment of others
An African adage has it that “a pot of soup never finishes if the owner of the house has not eaten of it.” I condemn it totally. It is something that stands against the progress of this country.
Favorite foods
Any food from Akwa Ibom state, as far as I am concerned is my favorite. I love eating with my hands. The day I will stop eating with my hands is the day I will see a Chinese man eating without a chopstick.
Wife
I have a lovely wife that is a sister and God-sent to me. I am very proud of her- Princess Emem Cajetan Akpan.
Time of relaxation
The best way to unwind is to read books. I love to read books because the more you read, the more informed you get.
Hobbies
In the evenings, I play football or I go for my volleyball as well as table tennis.
