A storm is gathering over one of Nigeria’s most powerful labor unions, and the thunderclap may soon bring its roof down. Once upon a time, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) wore the robe of a fearless defender of workers’ rights. Today, it is accused of having shed that robe, donned a silk agbada, and recast itself as a cartel, a cabal fattened on levies, intimidation, and extortion.
The elders of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD), the very backbone of the union, are no longer whispering; they are shouting from the rooftops, demanding the resignation of NUPENG’s top brass. Their charge sheet reads like the script of a Nollywood political thriller: corruption, abuse of office, intimidation, and dragging a once-respected body into national ridicule. But scratch beneath the drama, and you’ll find a darker truth: NUPENG no longer behaves like a union. It behaves like a cartel, holding Nigeria’s fuel supply by the throat while sipping champagne in first-class jets.
The list of sins is long: harassment of drivers, defiance of court orders, illegal levies at depots, and the conscription of members into street-level enforcers. Its notorious N39,000 “gate fee” per tanker truck, imposed without law, regulation, or shame, generates billions. A hidden tax. A shadow treasury. None of it declared, none of it accountable.
Let’s do the math. One fuel truck carries 33,000 liters. At N39,000 per truck, that’s about N1.18 slapped on every liter. Nigeria consumes roughly 50 million liters daily. That means NUPENG rakes in N59 million a day, N1.8 billion a month, nearly N22 billion a year, money that does not enter the nation’s coffers. At gas terminals, it is even worse. Members of the Nigeria Liquefied and Compressed Gases Association (NLCGA) complain of paying N72,000 per truck before loading. That’s another N3 billion in a year’s sweep, diverted straight into the union’s opaque vaults.
This isn’t trade unionism. It is armed robbery with an invoice. And yet, the greatest tragedy is reserved for the tanker drivers themselves—the men whose sweat and spilled blood lubricate the nation’s fuel economy. They drive rickety trucks on death-trap highways. They battle fatigue, accidents, fires, and the daily gamble of survival. For this, they get no pension, no insurance, no fallback plan. Should calamity strike, they are discarded like worn tires. NUPENG has no plan for them. Worse still, instead of protection, they are harassed by touts waving NUPENG’s banner, squeezed for levies on every highway corner.
How many of NUPENG’s executives have ever driven a tanker across Ore or Lokoja? None! Yet from their air-conditioned offices, they send men into the storm while they themselves float in SUVs, private jets, and international conferences, not the drivers they claim to represent.
As if that were not enough, NUPENG also deducts 1% of members’ salaries as dues. Millions vanish monthly. Who audits these accounts? No one. Perhaps it is time the Registrar of Trade Unions, or better yet, the EFCC, asked to see the books. But if history is any guide, NUPENG’s response will be as predictable as a badly written film: call a strike, threaten to collapse the economy, and hide its fear of accountability beneath the flag of “workers’ rights.”
The danger is not abstract. With one strike or blockade, NUPENG can paralyze the nation. This looming threat casts a dark shadow over the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, a $20 billion lifeline meant to end fuel importation and stabilize the energy market. If NUPENG’s extortion machinery hijacks Dangote’s planned 10,000-strong truck fleet, the dream could curdle into a nightmare. A single month of disruption could bleed Nigeria of $1.3 billion.
Yet, change is brewing. A new generation of tanker drivers is rising, no longer content to be pawns in the games of union barons. The International Labour Organization (ILO) is clear: union membership must be voluntary, not coerced. NUPENG’s chokehold on workers and businesses mocks Convention 87 on Freedom of Association. Where the ILO envisions freedom, NUPENG enforces fear. Where it preaches transparency, NUPENG practices racketeering.
Can a cartel be reformed? Can intimidation be digitized? Can extortion be given a fresh coat of paint and rebranded as “union service charge”?
Every liter of fuel sold in Nigeria today bears an invisible tax, not levied by the government but by a handful of union mandarins fattened on impunity. That is not unionism; that is criminality dressed in overalls.
The end of NUPENG in its current form is not a matter of if but when. The masquerade has danced too long in the market square. Nigerians deserve a union that defends labor, not one that weaponizes it. The Registrar of Trade Unions, the Ministry of Labor, and anti-corruption bodies must summon the courage to break this cartel before it sabotages the nation further. NUPENG’s fall will not be a tragedy; it will be a cleansing.
– Abiodun, a communications specialist, writes from Lagos.
