Dangote, NUPENG face-off: Oil workers disown direct trucking drivers’ association as fraud

…Say it’s a creation of union busters

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

The raging industrial dispute between the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, and the Dangote business empire has taken a new twist as the union disowned the so-called Direct Trucking Company Drivers Association DTCDA, describing it as a “management-inspired fraud” created to weaken and divide workers.

The association, which made a media appearance on a ARISE Television and in some newspapers over the weekend, had urged Nigerians to disregard NUPENG’s strike alert issued by the Petroleum Tanker Drivers Branch of the union.

But NUPENG  in a statement by Prince Williams Akporeha, President, and Olawale Afolabi, General Secretary, rejected the group outright, declaring: “We ask our members, members of the public and independent minded objective segments of the media to disregard, DTCDA and its statements.

“For the information of the public, the DTCDA is the Association which Dangote Group of Companies has formed for the drivers to join compulsorily rather than allowing drivers to join NUPENG which is the only statutorily recognized union authorized to unionize Petroleum Tanker Drivers. The signatory to the statement of DTCDA, one Enoch Kanawa, is a lawyer, not a tanker driver.”

NUPENG pointed out that the so-called president of the association, Enoch Kanawa, had a long history with oil industry employers, not workers:

“Kanawa was formerly the Executive Secretary of National Association of Road Transport Owners, NARTO, from 2001 to 2012, left NARTO to become Legal Adviser to MRS Energy Limited of Sayyu Aliu Dantata and in 2019 came back to contest for the position of the President of NARTO  but was defeated by Yusuf Othman, the current President of NARTO. These facts are to show without doubt and beyond controversy that the DTCDA is a management-inspired Association and the news was created by the agents of Sayyu Aliu Dantata to create confusion and misinformation.”

NUPENG further alleged that the DTCDA is tied directly to the Dangote empire and its cousin, Sayyu Aliu Dantata, owner of MRS Energy Limited.

The statement said “DTCDA is the association formed by Sayyu Aliu Dantata, the owner of MRS. The Direct Trucking Company Limited is the recruiting company that was formed by him and Alh Aliko Dangote for the 10,000 CNG Trucks they are importing. DTCDA was originally meant to be Dangote Transport Company. Its registered office is at 2, Tincan Island Port Road, Apapa, Lagos. The address of DTCDA is the same official address of MRS Energy Limited.”

Assuring members and the public of its unity, NUPENG declared there was no division in its ranks despite attempts by “union busters” to sow confusion.

“There is no division in our ranks and file, our Solidarity remains Constant! For the Union makes us Strong!! Our Solidarity remains Constant, for the Union makes us Strong!”

With NUPENG already threatening to begin a nationwide strike against Dangote’s alleged anti-union practices and the NLC placing workers nationwide on Red Alert, this fresh twist further deepens what is fast shaping into the fiercest confrontation between organized labour and Africa’s richest business empire.

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