Members of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) have demonstrated at the offices of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) to express rejection of the management’s decision to recruit external staff for senior roles.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, staff wore red T-shirts and picketed the Ikoyi corporate headquarters of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), a subsidiary of the NNPCL, in Lagos State.

Insiders privy to the development in the NNPCL say the reason for the action was that management was recruiting people into senior management roles without considering long-serving staff of the company.

One insider explained that there are Junior Staff (JS), Senior Staff (SS) and Management Staff (M) within the company. A graduate trainee enters at the SS6 level, two levels above JS1. The highest Senior Staff position is Chief Officer. Staff who get to this level can get promoted to deputy manager positions and then aspire to higher offices.

The president decides who becomes Group CEO and approves the management board. On April 2, President Bola Tinubu replaced Mele Kyari with Bayo Ojulari as GCEO, ushering in a new management board for the company.

Ojulari served as managing director of Shell Nigeria Exploration from 2015 to 2021.

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His appointment and the board’s decision to recruit from external sources have led workers to suspect the management wants to bring in workers from Shell. To express their displeasure, NUPENG and PENGASSAN issued a statement to Ojulari five days after his appointment.

The letter read in part, “We have critically examined that such recruitments over the years are either to satisfy cronies or pay back those that lobbied for their appointments to the detriment of the career growth of Nigerians who work in the company that have been properly trained over the years.”

STAFF COMPLAIN

When FIJ spoke to the company’s staff, they acknowledged it was not illegal or unethical for the management to recruit external staff. What they wanted, they told FIJ, was a chance to compete fairly.

“To move from SS6 to SS5 takes about three years of work,” one insider told FIJ.

“So it takes about 18-20 years to be a Chief Officer SS1, after which you take the Chief Officer course and be eligible for promotion to Deputy Manager.

“Deputy Manager is under the purview of top management and GCEO after a fair recruitment process.

“Before now, it comes by appointment, but Kyari introduced Internal Open recruitment (IOR) where open Deputy Manager positions are advertised, and then SS1 and SS2 compete through exams and interviews.

“But this significant external recruitment without a publicly advertised recruitment is just like how CBN acts, that’s why they hardly recruit openly.”

Already, new recruits have begun arriving at the company.

Via LinkedIn, Sandra Tengi, a lawyer, announced her appointment as Lead Counsel, Management Secretariat, a managerial position.

Prior to her appointment, she worked as Senior Executive Assistant to the managing director of SeaVentures Oil & Gas Services Ltd. from April 2021 to October 2024.

While operating in that capacity, she also was an Executive Assistant to the CEO of Plugged Festival Ltd. from January 2023 to December 2023. Her only documented legal practice was as Legal Intern at Bole Festival from May 2015 to March 2021. Going by her public profile, the NNPC job appears to be her first full-time job in the legal profession and her first civil service role.

“Those who entered NNPC in 2005 are about 500. Only 50 of them have been able to cross over to management, and the average age for that group is 43 years currently,” one member of staff claims.

“Some of the new deputy managers penned down for appointment outside the system are about 35–38 years which is a gross injustice.

“If it was an open recruitment to fill management role, they can’t compete with more experienced internal staff.”

While recruitment remains within the management’s purview, staff of the company continue to appeal to the management to make decisions that do not hinder their career growth.

When FIJ asked what would happen if the management continued to ignore their demands, a staff member said, “For now, we are just occupying the entrances. If they don’t listen, we will proceed to disruption and stop work altogether.”