In theory, trade unions exist to protect workers’ rights, negotiate fair wages, and balance power between labor and capital. But in too many nations and epochs, unions have been twisted into political tools, destabilize lizing forces, or levers of extra legal pressure.
This is the dark side of unionism: its weaponization. Across the world, governments, corporations, and power brokers have manipulated or coerced unions to achieve political ends. In Nigeria, that history is long. And now the confrontation between the Dangote Refinery and Nigeria’s oil unions offers a vivid case study of how unionism can be politicized, distorted, and used as a vector of corporate or state power. The confrontation offers a sharp, contemporary example of how unionism can be bent to anti development ends and how it mirrors deep structures of control pervading Nigeria’s political economy.
The weaponization of unions is hardly new. Historical and contemporary examples abound: In Nazi Germany, the regime dissolved independent unions and created a state controlled labor front to suppress worker dissent. Under Stalinist regimes, unions served as arms of the party, enforcing quotas and curtailing workers’ autonomy. In Latin America, populist leaders have co-opted unions as political base machines, rewarding loyalists and punishing dissidents.
In most cases, the listed inclusive, unions shift from being defenders of labor to instruments of control, either by the state, and mostly, as in Nigeria case, by few powerful men and politicians monitoring members, to achieve self set economic and political objectives. The effect is not worker empowerment, but worker manipulation. Now, compare this trajectory with Nigeria, where unionism once served as a pillar of resistance, but has often been bent to serve elite interests, sometimes in collusion with state or business powers.
From the colonial era onward, labor unions in Nigeria have had a complicated role—sometimes heroic, sometimes compromised. In colonial Nigeria, unions were central to ant colonial resistance, mobilizing workers and asserting rights. After independence, unions often merged into political parties, losing some autonomy. During military rule, unions were heavily suppressed or co-opted, their leaders pressured into silence or collaboration. In recent decades, unions sometimes aligned with political elites, benefiting from patronage and using strikes or industrial action to extract rent or political leverage rather than genuine structural reforms.
Thus, while Nigeria’s constitution guarantees freedom of association, the practice of unionism has often been fraught with internal divisions, political subversion, and conflicting loyalties. The right to unionize versus corporate autonomy becomes an issue of debate. One core contention is whether Dangote’s workforce has unfettered right to unionize. The union claims most dismissed workers were penalized for organizing, Dangote insists union membership is voluntary under Nigerian law and that dismissal was due to nonperformance or reorganization. The ambiguity is exploited.
Union leaders retaliated by cutting crude and gas supply valves to the refinery, halting vessel loadings, and pressing member branches to compliance and disrupted around 16% of Nigeria’s oil output while the madness last, causing massive reverberations across energy, power, and export sectors.
Trade unions were meant to be instruments of dignity, not tools of obstruction. But in Nigeria’s 2025 oil drama, the line has been crossed. Union action now acts as a brake on progress, defending rent-seeking systems rather than catalyzing reform. Gaza’s bombarded streets and Nigeria’s refinery standoff may seem distant, but they share a common theme: powerful interests resisting change, using instruments, militarized unions or armies to perpetuate dominance.
If powerful unions can throttle the country’s flagship refinery, imagine how they might oppose off grid power, agro-industrial hubs, transport modernization, or healthcare infrastructure. The message sent to investors and citizens is chilling: reforms may be attacked not just through law but by organized disruption.
The abuse of unionism in Nigeria is evident in the cartel-like resistance to Dangote Refinery’s fair pricing. The continued abuse has become a serious threat to economic progress. Despite offering aviation fuel at ₦980/litre and LPG at ₦800/kg, powerful cartels disguised as unions resist fair market practices and insist on selling at ₦1,240 and above ₦1,000 respectively, sabotaging consumer relief to protect their monopoly. Their fear is losing monopoly profits. This manipulation under the guise of union interest is exploitative and anti-development, holding Nigerians hostage to inflated prices. This isn’t labor advocacy; its economic exploitation disguised as unionism. By frustrating competition and stalling affordable supply, these groups are hurting ordinary Nigerians. True unionism should support innovation, fair pricing, and national development—not perpetuate greed. It’s time for regulatory intervention to dismantle these monopolies and put the public interest first.
Exactly the projected immoral profit gain; they shut down the system for few days in protest and the unit price of cooking gas jumped from #900 to almost #2500. They ended the strike and refused to restore the price status quo. As expected, Nigerians will suffer for another season while they rake in excess profits under the guise of unionisim. We cannot continue like this.
It is time to reclaim unionism for development. If unionism is to be a force for justice and not obstruction, Nigeria must: Strengthen labor laws and penalize abuse, equip courts and labor agencies to sanction unions misusing strikes for political or corporate ends, ensure autonomy and accountability, prevent union leadership from colluding with elites or corporations, insulate infrastructural projects and enact protections around critical national infrastructure from union blockades.
It is time to promote worker participation and transparency in unionism; making union decision-making processes open and accountable to rank-and-file members and not any longer few who have become puppets in the hands of rent seekers and politicians.
Internationally, regimes have long manipulated unions: dissolved them, co-opted them, or used them as enforcement arms. In Nigeria, the story is older and more tangled. Labor was central to anti colonial resistance. But over decades, unions have at times become enmeshed with political elites, drifting from champions of labor into tools for coalition building or corporate protection. Thus the idea that a union exists purely for workers has often been more aspiration than real in Nigeria. The lines between labor, politics, and business have too frequently blurred.
In late 2025, tensions erupted when PENGASSAN, a major oil workers union launched strike action after Dangote Petroleum dismissed over 800 workers. The refinery responded by accusing some staff of sabotage; the union retaliated by halting gas and crude supply. The result: severe disruption to Nigeria’s oil throughput and a crisis that threatened energy stability.
The union’s strike was not a mere collective action, it was a coercive tool employed to protect entrenched interests. Dangote’s refinery represents a paradigm shift: a self-sustaining, transparent, modern energy operation that threatens to bypass the subsidy infested networks that have long dominated Nigeria’s petroleum economy. The current union assault is a defensive reaction by those profiting from dysfunction. It is sabotage masquerading as labor advocacy. In the same way that subsidy cartels used governmental and union complicity to maintain rents and opacity, now similar actors deploy union muscle to stifle innovation, extension, and competition.
This case is not just about Dangote or the oil sector. It is a test of whether Nigeria can protect transformative projects from sabotage, whether unionism can be redeemed as a democratic force, or whether it will continue to serve as a gatekeeper of stagnation.
Their strategy; weaponize supply chains, cut off gas, crude, deliveries and plunge the refinery into crisis. They provoke regulatory and legal intervention to undermine momentum. They monopolize public narratives to frame their actions as righteous defense rather than obstruction. This is the same ethos that upheld decades of wasteful fuel subsidy: an unholy alliance of political elites, contractors, unions, and oil interests determined to block structural reform.
These are happening because the nation continues to harbor weak legal and institutional systems. We still make do with ambiguous labor law. A labor statutes that leave room for interpretations; Dangote claims dismissals were legal reorganization, unions claim victimization for organizing. These institutional gaps enable union weaponization and make reform difficult.
As Nigeria seeks development, unity, and integrity, it must reclaim unionism from sabotage, protect innovation against blockades, and assert that reform cannot be held hostage to outdated rent systems. The future demands unions that empower not paralyze the nation. The idea that a union exists purely for workers has often been more aspiration than real in Nigeria. The lines between labor, politics, and business have too frequently blurred.
Internationally, regimes have long manipulated unions: dissolved them, co-opted them, or used them as enforcement arms. In Nigeria, the story is older and more tangled. Labor was central to ant colonial resistance. But over decades, unions have at times become enmeshed with political elites, drifting from champions of labor into tools for coalition building or corporate protection.
This standoff is more than an employer employee dispute. It reveals multiple layers of weaponized unionism. The union used its leverage over energy supply lines to exert maximum pressure, effectively weaponizing industrial action beyond mere collective bargaining. Nigerians and the civil society groups must largely defend Dangote, urging unions to refrain from interference and urging lawful dispute resolution. We must know that the bent attempt to control the operation of the refinery and the standoff it is creating is altogether sending wrong signals to foreign investors.
This is beyond Dangote or Nigeria’s oil sector. It is a template for how unionism is being weaponized in modern Nigeria: True unionism is a force for equity, justice, and shared prosperity not a weapon in corporate or state warfare. If Nigeria is truly going to build a developmental future, unions must be strengthened, regulated, and protected. The Dangote union standoff should serve as a wakeup call, not just for oil and gas, but for all sectors of Nigeria’s economy. As private power concentrates, and as states edge toward accommodating corporate control, unions must resist being warped into mere tools of antagonism or leverage.
The recent actions by oil and gas unions against the Dangote Refinery must be understood for what they are: a brazen attempt to maintain an unholy grip over Nigeria’s petroleum industry, even at the expense of national progress. This is not about workers’ rights it is about preserving the power structures and vested interests that benefitted from the opaque and corrupt fuel subsidy regime. For decades, these unions functioned not just as labor bodies but as gatekeepers of a broken system, complicit, directly or otherwise in the exploitation of national resources.
Dangote’s refinery represents a bold step toward energy independence, price stability, and industrial rebirth. That it became a target for sabotage Supply disruption shows how entrenched interests fear a transparent and efficient alternative. These union actions, far from progressive, are anti-development, anti-investment, and fundamentally anti-people. Nigeria cannot afford to let those who benefited from dysfunction dictate the future. The time has come to break the monopoly of sabotage and allow transformative projects to thrive free from blackmail, coercion, or politicized unionism.
In the ongoing impasse between Dangote Refinery and organized oil and gas unions, Vice President, Shettima has rightly emphasized that *Nigerians’ interest must come first*. The welfare of over 200 million citizens outweighs the narrow interests of any union, no matter how powerful. PENGASSAN and its allies must recognize that the era of monopoly and sabotage under the guise of unionism is over. If Dangote’s direct fuel supply reduces prices and eases suffering, then obstructing it is anti-people and unjustifiable. The unions must not weaponize their influence to frustrate progress and protect old exploitative systems. National development demands bold reforms, and no group should be allowed to hold the economy hostage. The time has come to prioritize the masses, not vested interests. The President’s stance is a call to put patriotism over politics, and progress over protectionism — because Nigeria is bigger than any union.
Professor Medaner is reachable via: justme4justice@yahoo.com.
