Petroleum Proletariat: Nigerian Oil Workers in Contextual and Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Labour, like gender, has been an almost unseen element in Nigeria’s political economy; analytic attention has been focused elsewhere: on capital, commodities, energy and technology. Despite the roller-coaster of petroleum prices, regime types and economic fortunes, the emphasis has largely been on macroeconomic indicators. At best, some recognition has been extended to the lead actors in the ‘triple alliance’ of bourgeois fractions: state (including military?), national and transnational (comprador?) capitals (Shaw, 1984). And, notwithstanding the visible growth of inequalities, particularly of an impoverished peasantry in the countryside and the marginalised un/underemployed in the cities, minimal analysis has been extended to Nigeria’s new majority: the working class. In spite of the dramatic role which oil-rent has played in the Nigerian ecomomy since the early 1970s, no study of the oil proletariat yet exists in any form. And the strategic location of these workers within the labour movement as well as in the oil-dependent economy has not been exploited by the left in Nigeria.

There is still much acute poverty in Nigeria… There is little evidence that Nigeria’s big expenditure has made much impact on the conditions of the majority of the population. The distortions experienced by the oil exporters seem to have been repeated in Nigeria. (ILO, First Things First, 1981: v and 5)

Labour or the trade union movement was one of the mass organisations which experienced permanent repression throughout the duration of military dictatorship in Nigeria … it must be admitted that the workers and peasants in the working class have rarely, if ever, combined to mount joint class action against the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in neo-colonial Nigeria on the lines of the mass opposition to colonial rule. (Bade Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria, 1982: 209 and 230)

The state acquires much technology via a triad of state comprador, Nigerian middleman and foreign supplier … The stakes are big, as oil revenues and an expanding bureaucracy offer extensive opportunities for patronage. The multiplication of commercial triangles can lead only to more corruption, more instability and a rapid return to military rule. (Terisa Turner, ‘Nigeria: imperialism, oil technology and the comprador state’, 1980: 211 and 220)

… oil workers have been the most understudied and misunderstood segment of the working class in oil economies, even by radical scholars. In Nigeria for instance, there has been to date no serious or comprehensive study of the ‘oil proletariat’ in order to determine its level of consciousness, nature of struggles, problems, union structure and struggles between and within factions/fractions of this sub-class. (Julius Ihonvbere, ‘Class struggles in the oil industry’, 1984b: 3)

Many people do not understand us. They just assume that we are all well paid and comfortable workers. They do not try to understand the problems and attacks we face everyday. Life is tough for all workers in Nigeria. But pressures on oil workers is higher because of the reliance on our activities by (both) the companies and government. (Elijah Okougbo, Assistant General Secretary, NUPENG, field interview, Lagos, January, 1984)