By Azu Ishiekwene

The Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Nigeria’s lifeline from decades of rot in the petroleum downstream, has to fight every inch for its turf. The fight started 18 years ago, when the refinery was only an idea.

In 2007, those who swore that a refinery – any refinery, public or private – would only work over their dead bodies forced President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries with a gun over his head. Among the vested interests, the unions pulled the trigger on the $670 million sale to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium.

Since then, Nigeria has spent an estimated $20 billion trying to fix four state refineries with a combined capacity of 450,000 bpd, roughly the amount it cost Dangote to build a brand new one with a capacity of 650,000 bpd. Still, the cabal wants more for its whited sepulchre that can barely convert steam to water.

Dangote fights back

After commissioning and commencement of production, and despite an understanding that the Dangote Refinery would buy crude oil locally, it is still forced to import 60 percent of its crude oil from the US. Yet, the cartel is not done inflicting misery on the country. It is lining up behind those who import petrol from abroad and stirring up allegations that Dangote products have high sulphur content – an accusation made shamelessly by a regulatory body without a testing laboratory.

It was very encouraging that Aliko, not known for public brawls, laid in on the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Agency (NMDPRA) in response to the last challenge.

When we thought the Dangote ship was out of troubled waters, the cabal showed up with another nasty and clumsy tackle. They can’t believe that the lucrative “subsidised” petrol fraud, from which they cornered about N2 trillion in questionable claims or N50,000 per petrol truck, is ending.

Unions are for unions…

Under the auspices of the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (DAPPMAN), they want the Dangote Refinery to continue to pass on the windfall costs that the previous nebulous import regimes granted them to consumers. They didn’t just stop there; they brandished a seven-day ultimatum after which they would inflict an orchestrated and premeditated chaos on the market.

They thrive very well and ride the clouds when there are long queues and petrol is scarce. That is when their golden calf receives all the sacrificial totems they demand, including the blood of Nigerians they claim to be fighting for.

Oil unions and the depot association are doing for Shakespeare what he couldn’t achieve in his innocent depiction of some of the most horrendous middlemen from The Merchant of Venice to The Taming of the Shrew.

The folks in these associations who live large off our collective misery insist on reaping where they have not sown. They are taking the fight to Dangote’s turf, insisting that the company pays N1.5 trillion as a hostage fee for the obsolete depot model or nothing. That model, now discarded, ensured that unions got a cut of every litre that came through. As Thomas Sowell rightly said in his article, “Union Myths,” “The biggest myth about unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for the unions.”

Whose dog is in the fight?

But this is not all about Dangote. It’s more about free-loading agents who have become entitled to living beyond their means and passing the extra cost to ordinary Nigerians.

But how and why do they even dare? Because this is Nigeria, where unions could shut down the national grid, and the heavens won’t come crashing on their heads. This is just a little bit of how unions have become emboldened over the years – to grab the nation by its balls and even give a nasty pinch, then walk away with victory songs.

Pound for pound, Dangote Refinery is putting up a bold resistance, unlike what the unions and vested interests behind it have been accustomed to over the years.

For decades, these unions have never protested against publicly owned refineries where their members work and earn salaries for doing nothing. But they are suddenly against Dangote delivering products to retail outlets for free. They don’t even want him to modernise the product distribution channels. They have monopolised inefficiency but want to blackmail Dangote into setting up a monopoly.

Obstruction after obstruction

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, the National Industrial Court in Abuja granted an ex parte order in favour of Dangote Petroleum Refinery. Justice Emmanuel Danjuma Subilim granted the relief based on a motion and originating processes filed by Dangote on September 15, 2025.

The ruling barred the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Direct Trucking Company Drivers Association from embarking on any industrial action or striking against Dangote Refinery. The court also restrained these unions from blocking roads or disrupting operations at Dangote Refinery and its affiliate companies.

The injunction is interim and was initially ordered to last seven days, pending the hearing and determination of a motion on notice. The ruling also directed that the unions continue petroleum trucking services to the refinery and the Nigerian public until the substantive matter is resolved.

The implications of the ruling in Dangote Refinery’s favour are preventing union-led industrial actions that could disrupt the refinery’s operations. Thus, the National Industrial Court stepped in to stop the unions from compelling drivers to strike, or obstructing routes critical to Dangote’s fuel distribution, and causing unnecessary hardship to Nigerians already pushed against the wall with high commodity prices, which would further escalate by any oil-related strife.

The same old trope

The trope of retaining “our national patrimony” has always been in play for the unions and vested interests. They keep their jobs and enjoy the comfortable position of watching the government spend billions of dollars on refining complexes they knew would never work.

They’ve been subtly trying to truncate the Tinubu administration’s effort to dispose of these redundant refineries through drastic reforms. Now they have a formidable adversary in a refiner who’s pulling the rug from under their feet and even exporting refined products from Nigeria in their lifetime – something they must consider quite unthinkable.

Worm in the plant

Like we say in Africa, the worm eating the plant lives in the plant. Despite the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) – a bold attempt to make Nigeria’s oil and gas sector work for investors, the country and its people, the enemies within won’t allow corpses to be buried.

For the NNPCL and the several unions and affiliates deriving from the economy’s petroleum and natural gas sector, the changes Nigeria has yearned for in the industry are creeping in, willy-nilly.

They have had their day for years and monopolised the retail and sale of products from this lucrative and oily sector. They’ve overseen its collapse, while at the same time becoming wealthy merchants and agents.

 But this era must end. 

We need more risk takers like Dangote, not self-serving unions and unionists feeding off our misery.

Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.