Oscarline Onwuemenyi
24 April 2016, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has called on the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu to resign his appointment for failing to address the challenges facing the oil and gas industry and causing untold hardship on the citizenry.
NUPENG General-Secretary, Joseph Ogbebor, in a statement yesterday advised the minister to resign for his inability to address the perennial fuel scarcity which has become an epidemic and a cankerworm since his appointment as NNPC Group Managing Director.
The union said the man-hours lost at filling stations were becoming unbearable as the solutions proffered by him have yielded no results but pains on the masses.
The union said Kachikwu’s policies were too elitist and not in tandem with the campaign promises of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
“The union notes that the proposed plan by NNPC under Dr. Ibe Kachikwu to cut contracting cycle in the oil and gas sector which will impact negatively on the workers in the sector from the current two to four years to six months will further worsen the unemployment situation in the country,” NUPENG said.
It added that the planned privatisation of the nation’s assets such as the refineries, depots, and jetties, through the backdoor to cronies will further compound the challenges facing the sector.
“This is borne out of the total failure of the privatization of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which brought us total darkness and massive loss of jobs,” it added.