The company has been carrying out this inhuman exercise in the most arrogant manner typical of employers who always regard their employees as nothing but expendable tools. Not only that the exercise is shrouded in secrecy, but it is also the one aimed at sacking only the Nigerians who the company regards as not meeting its performance criteria, while their the expatriates who do not meet these criteria will be provided jobs else where in the Shell Group.

SPDC produces close to half of Nigeria’s crude oil under a joint venture arrangement in which the Federal Government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Development Corporation (NNPC) holds 55 per cent equity, SPDC as the technical operator holds 30 per cent, Total Group 10 per cent and Agip Group five per cent.

SPDC has operated in Nigeria for some 67 years, exploiting the country’s oil and gas resources using the locals whose labour supply has been rated the lowest among the nations where the Shell Group operates in the world. Apart from cheap labour, the terrain in which SPDC is taking the oil and gas is most as little is spent in terms of money to bring the oil to the surface, unlike the case with the difficult terrain of Europe, especially the North Sea. In fact, the relative ease with which SPDC produces hydrocarbons in Nigeria compensates more adequately than the loss it might incur on agitations by the highly impoverished communities on whose land the oil wealth is gotten.

For reasons of cheap labour, comparative friendly terrain for hydrocarbons and the permissive and collaborative government policies, SPDC has been making huge profits in Nigeria that ranks the company in the number one position of the profit making machine for the Shell Group whose headquarters is in The Hague. SPDC is simply the golden goose that lays the golden egg for almost all the overseas operating companies of the Shell worldwide.

While the fortune of the Shell Group is soaring based on its intake from Nigeria, the same cannot be said about the Nigerian employees and the rest of Nigerians whose land produces the wealth. No thanks to official corruption, selfishness and insensitivity of the ruling class.

Nigerians, especially those from the Niger Delta continue to suffer various depravations, ranging from environmental pollution, inadequate compensation for land-take and impacted land, under-development, ignorance to unemployment. As Nigerians reap nothing tangible from their oil resources, various government functionaries and small cabals in the communities are struggling for crumbs from Shell’s table.

Today, SPDC is putting final touches to its so-called “Securing our future” (SoFU) programme under which about half of Nigerian employees will leave the company unceremoniously and with pittance at the end of 2004. What an end of the year gift for the employees and invariably the Federal Government! These are the workers who have toiled for the company over the years, some of them had been taken hostage several times and a few even lost their lives in the process of working to keep the vision of a foreign business conglomerate alive.

It is interesting to note that in less than 12 years starting from 1993, SPDC has carried out three retrenchment exercises. The only reason advanced for them has been ‘cost reduction’. One wonders if staff reduction is the only panacea for high cost of production. And if an establishment had tried staff reduction several times but failed to achieve cost reduction as in the case of SPDC, what stops the company from looking else where? This is the question the two workers’ union, PENGASSAN and NUPENG are asking the management of SPDC.

The unions have argued that SPDC needed not to sack Nigerians while making so much profit to sustain Shell’s ailing overseas companies. They advised the management to look inward and plough the holes from which money drains out. These holes are many, among which are contract inflation, gigantic projects, corruption, double standards and lack of transparency. The unions are pained that the company is not allowing them to contribute meaningfully to the so-called SoFU. One area of contention is that the company is exercising the prerogative of determining who should go and who should stay, even as some employees have indicated the willingness to go taking into consideration the incessant job insecurity and lack of transparency in the manner the company is relating to them. The unions are saying that employees who wish to go should be allowed to go as there is no need forcing an unwilling horse.

Unable to struggle alone the unions have taken their case to the Federal Government, both the senate and House of Representatives. Sadly, the government has appeared handicap in dealing with the Frankenstein monster that SPDC has become. This is a government that is funding SPDC to the tune of 55 per cent not being able to protect its citizens when it matters!

It is on record that the so-called SoFU borne out of globalisation failed to take off in the Shell company in Philippines, because the government there told Shell to go ahead but on the condition that the remaining Filipinos in the employment of the company must be paid in dollars! Shell backed down. In Omar, it was the government rather than the employees that fought to ensure adequate severance package for the workers.

The feedback is that the Obasanjo government is in tacit support of SPDC and that the government will soon as the company to take it through the process of SoFU, so that it can be applied to NNPC and government-owned establishments including the civil service.

One question that this administration should ask itself is how many Nigerians has it been able to provide employment for since the inception of the so-called democracy in May 1999? The Nigerians that are working at present are mostly under-employed. It is in the history of this country that university graduates had been lured to drive passenger buses under the Graduate Drivers Scheme. We are now producing another set of university graduates working under small umbrellas erected on the streets as gsm phone operators. What a shame? If a government is unable to provide employment for a sizeable number of its citizens, it should be able to keep those in employment, especially within the confines of its own country. It is only the government that does not know the ripple effect of sacking one oil worker who is a bread winner for an average of 10 persons under the present hash economic situation in the country.