Nigeria News Forum

ABUJA – THE leadership of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN has said that its planned strike expected to commence Thursday because of the alleged insensitivity of the Federal Government to resolve some issues affecting the oil and gas sector will be total. This is just as the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige and the Minister of State, Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu are expected to meet with the aggrieved leaderships of PENGASSAN and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG this morning to find a way out of the unresolved vexatious issues. Speaking to Vanguard on phone in Abuja Wednesday, the National Public Relations Officer, PRO, of PENGASSAN, Emma Ojugbana said that there was no signal to the effect that the strike which he said would be a total shut down would be shelved. Ojugbana who said he was not aware of any scheduled meeting with the government today, stated, “As I speak with you as the ...

WARRI—Niger Delta Indigenous Movement For Radical Change, NDIMRC, an oil monitoring group which had earlier warned of plot to remove Dr Ibe Kachikwu as the Group Managing Director, GMD, of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has condemned President Muhammadu Buhari for his removal. Kachikwu was replaced with the former Group Executive Director, Exploration and Production of the corporation, Dr Maikanti Baru. NDIMRC had earlier alerted of pressure mounted by Northern interests led by Baru, to be made the GMD of the state-run oil firm, before President Buhari finally succumbed on July 4, 2016 when he removed Kachikwu from oil-rich Delta State as the corporation’s executive head. The group in a statement by its President, Nelly Emma, kicked against the sudden removal of Dr Kachikwu as the GMD of NNPC by the President, describing it as unfair treatment not only to the hard-working technocrat, but to the entire people of the neglected oil rich Niger Delta region....

THE Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, yesterday faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s insistence that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable, arguing that the President’s view showed that he has not realized that a new trend of resolving such issues had taken over. The President, while having an audience with some people who paid him sallah homage at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, quoted former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon’s stand during the Nigeria-Biafra war that the task of keeping Nigeria as one united entity is a task that must be accomplished. Reacting on the President’s statement, MASSOB leader, Chief Uchenna Madu said the Movement totally disagreed with the President, describing his statement as the thoughts of somebody who still believed in old ways of doing things. He said: “The President, in his inner sense of reasoning, believes that he will easily crush Biafra, maybe with his intimidating tendencies over Igbo governors, Nation...