Protesting tanker drivers threaten breakaway from NUPENG
Oil tanker drivers in Nigeria threatened to leave the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) yesterday.
According to The PUNCH, PTD threatened to leave the oil union unless NUPENG’s National President, Williams Akporeha, and its General Secretary, Olawale Afolabi, resigned.
Gbenga Olawale and Adekunle Rufai of PTD, Ibadan Depot, made this information public in a statement issued in Abuja.
According to the statement, drivers around the country participated in the demonstration by placing plant leaves in front of their vehicles to send a message to NUPENG and the police not to interfere with or harass the group’s leaders.
They claimed the NUPENG president lacked the expertise to run the union because he was not an oil worker.
According to them, Williams was a cook at an oil firm within the formal sector and was sacked from the company while holding the office of the national treasurer of NUPENG.
They also claimed that he was forced to join the NUPENG Petrol Station Workers Union in order to run for president.
Williams was neither an employee nor a pump attendant at the time he verified for the presidency of NUPENG, which, according to them, was a major violation of the organization’s constitution.
They made this claim by asserting that he was incompetent to serve as president of NUPENG. They further claimed that he had placed surrogates in order to syphon off the union’s funds for personal gain.
As a result, the tanker drivers claimed they had made the decision to side with the heroic Osusan and Dayyab Garaga.
According to the NUPENG secretary, however, the charges are untrue because the group responsible for the statement is not affiliated with the PTD.
Afolabi said that the statement’s authors had been incarcerated in Abuja’s Kuje prison.
According to the NUPENG secretary, “they are not PTD members, their leaders attacked us recently in Abuja, and they were arrested and jailed in Kuje prison, Abuja, on the orders of the court.”
