When the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria marched into its latest strike with the swagger of an old champion, it never imagined that the same Nigerians who once hailed its battles would now see it as the villain of the story, writes Festus Akanbi

When  the  Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) ordered a nationwide shutdown late last month, it did so with the swagger of an old warrior returning to a familiar battlefield. Oil wells went quiet, gas plants powered down, and refinery gates shut in unison. It was the kind of theatre the union had perfected over four decades, one that used to leave government trembling and the nation gasping.

But this time, the applause never came. Instead of fear or sympathy, what followed was irritation. Between September 29 and October 2, the once-revered oil workers’ union discovered that Nigeria had moved on, and its old methods had lost their magic.

The strike, targeted at the $20 billion Dangote Refinery, was meant to show strength. Instead, it exposed weakness. The disruption reportedly cost the country 600,000 barrels of crude and 7 billion cubic feet of gas, with petrol prices jumping to N905 per litre and cooking gas doubling to N2,000. Yet, instead of rallying behind the workers, Nigerians took to the streets in Kaduna, Kano, and Port Harcourt to defend Dangote. Their placards told the new story: “Protect Dangote, Crush the Cartel.”

For PENGASSAN, once the moral conscience of industrial labour, it was a stunning reversal, a union discovering, too late, that the world had rewritten its script.

When the Crowd Turned

To grasp the scale of the shift, one must recall what PENGASSAN once represented. For years, it was the steel backbone of Nigeria’s labour movement, the union that could paralyse a nation by locking a few valves. Back when the country imported almost all its fuel, every strike by PENGASSAN or its blue-collar cousin, NUPENG, meant chaos. Governments panicked before the first petrol station ran dry.

Those were the glory days, when shutting down the pipelines meant holding the economy hostage.

But 2025 is not 2016. The rise of local refining, led by Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery and the revived Port Harcourt plant, has broken that monopoly. More than half of Nigeria’s petrol now comes from domestic refineries. Every day those refineries operate, the union’s leverage erodes.

So when PENGASSAN took on Dangote over the dismissal of 800 workers, it misread the times. The refinery wasn’t just another employer; it symbolised Nigeria’s long-cherished dream of self-sufficiency. For millions who once paid N1,200 for imported petrol, Dangote represented relief, not exploitation. To attack it was to attack hope itself.

So when the strike sent cooking gas soaring to N2,000, the public lost patience. On social media, memes renamed the union “Poverty Engineering and Gas Scarcity Association of Nigeria.” TikTok skits mocked ageing labour leaders still “fighting the ghosts of the 1980s.” The street had turned against its old champion.

A New Economic Reality

Today’s economy also plays by different rules. Since the economic reforms of May 2023, the removal of fuel subsidies, the naira float, and stricter fiscal controls, the government no longer has the political slush funds that once oiled industrial peace.

When the strike hit, the finance minister reportedly warned that each lost day cost the country $75 million. Vice-President Kashim Shettima bluntly framed the arithmetic: every valve shut was an act of economic sabotage. The government’s vocabulary is now IMF-style, debt ratios, fiscal cliffs, and productivity metrics.

PENGASSAN, clinging to the protest playbook of 1998, found itself negotiating in a world that had moved to 2025.

Within its own ranks, the union is also ageing. The average branch chair is 54; only two of its national executives are under 45. Meanwhile, a new generation of refinery engineers speaks the language of automation, hydrogen blending, and carbon capture.

When Dangote replaced 200 contract engineers with 150 foreign-trained specialists in ultra-low-sulphur systems, PENGASSAN cried foul. But industry observers saw it as a global compliance move, not discrimination. The refinery cited clauses from the Petroleum Industry Act; the union quoted the 1974 Labour Act, an echo of how far apart both sides were.

For a union built on the illusion of indispensability, the moment was bruising.

The Street’s Verdict

Nowhere was PENGASSAN’s fall from grace more visible than in Kaduna, where protesters, mostly under 30, poured into the streets, led by activist Igwe Ude-Umanta. They weren’t fighting for higher wages but defending their right to affordable fuel.

Citing IMF data, they argued that local refining could save Nigeria $8 billion in import costs annually, money that could fund 6,000 kilometres of dual carriageways. To them, PENGASSAN wasn’t a defender of workers but a shield for old import cartels threatened by reform.

Cracks in Labour’s House

Even the wider labour movement is fracturing. NUPENG publicly distanced itself from the strike. Within the Trade Union Congress (TUC), some leaders now question whether PENGASSAN President Festus Osifo should continue holding dual offices, citing “conflict of representation.”

In the Niger Delta, where militants once blocked flow stations in solidarity, community leaders now praise “the refining revolution” for promising jobs and cheaper diesel. The politics of scarcity no longer sells. People’s anger today is about the cost of bread, not the ownership of crude.

Lessons from the Debacle

The first lesson for PENGASSAN is humility. Dangote Refinery is not a mere private firm; it is a national symbol, financed by 28 global banks and insured under covenants that treat labour unrest as a “material default.” A prolonged strike could have triggered $3.5 billion in loan freezes and a potential sovereign credit downgrade.

The union must decide what it wants to be: a professional lobby for oil workers or a disruptive economic force. It cannot be both.

The second lesson is adaptation. The dispute over the 800 dismissed workers ended not with reinstatement but redeployment, a subtle sign that the rules have changed. Negotiation in the new economy is not about headcount but about retraining.

Imagine a forward-looking PENGASSAN pushing for a $50 million annual skills fund jointly managed by Dangote, NNPC, and the Petroleum Technology Development Fund. Such a fund could train engineers in hydrogen refining, hydro-treating, and carbon capture, the technologies defining tomorrow’s industry. That’s the unionism Nigeria needs: strategic, data-driven, and globally literate.

Cleaning Its House

The union must also reform internally. The leaked memo dissolving its NGIC/NGML branch executives for “failing to cut off gas completely” exposed its archaic command culture. In an age of transparency, that was a public relations disaster.

A credible fix would be electronic balloting for all 12,000 members, with a 75% approval threshold before any nationwide strike. That would restore legitimacy and deprive the government of excuses to invoke national security laws.

Above all, PENGASSAN must understand what Shettima called “the new patriotism”, a civic order where national interest comes before sectional muscle. The government now treats disruptions in energy supply as economic sabotage, punishable by up to 25 years under the Terrorism (Prevention) Act.

The union can fight that interpretation in court, but it would be a costly and uncertain battle. The wiser path is cooperation, to become a stakeholder in national productivity, not a relic of resistance.

A Chance for Redemption

To its credit, PENGASSAN eventually suspended the strike “in the national interest.” Critics sneered, calling it a surrender, but it could mark the beginning of renewal. The union now has a brief window, before Dangote’s second 400,000-barrel-per-day line starts, to reinvent itself.

It can lead the conversation on green jobs, energy transition, and just-transition funding, ensuring Nigerian engineers remain relevant in the next energy age. Or it can cling to nostalgia and fade into irrelevance, remembered only for the chaos it once caused.

If it chooses the latter, the next shutdown may not end with a communique but a court order.