The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has launched a campaign against prolonged contract staffing and casualization across the country’s oil and gas operations.
Comrade Bosun Olabiyi-Agoro emerged as national president alongside other executive officers at PENGASSAN’s First Quadrennial National Delegate Conference in Abuja on Saturday.
He succeeds Comrade Festus Osifo, who concluded a six-year leadership tenure running from 2020 to 2026.
Institutional Action on Multi-Year Temporary Contracts
Prolonged temporary contracting creates structural risks that directly undermine worker welfare, industrial safety, and long-term labor relations across upstream and downstream energy installations.
Olabiyi-Agoro stated that while the union recognizes international standards for temporary labor, it rejects corporate practices that keep employees on short-term contracts for two, five, ten, or twenty years.
The association plans to deploy institutional oversight and industrial measures to halt the practice of using perpetual contract status to bypass core benefits and reduce corporate wage bills.
Five-Point Reform Agenda and Collective Bargaining Enforcement
The incoming national leadership has structured a five-point operational framework designed to strengthen union governance and protect technical professionals.
The program prioritizes aggressive job protection and membership expansion, strict defense of existing Collective Bargaining Agreements, and the promotion of structured industrial relations with operating companies.
Additional pillars focus on advancing technical training, expanding women empowerment initiatives, improving internal welfare structures, and strengthening the association’s public image.
Labor Protections Amid Divestments and Energy Transition
International oil companies continue executing onshore and shallow-water asset divestments across the Niger Delta, altering traditional employment structures.
PENGASSAN confirmed it will negotiate just-transition frameworks, technical retraining, and strategic redeployments for workers impacted by these divestments, workplace automation, and broader decarbonization shifts.
The executive council affirmed that the union will enforce these workforce transition agreements to prevent job losses as energy companies adjust operational models.
