Part Three: Subsidy Fraud, Illegal Pipelines, and Union Complicity.

Nigeria’s fuel subsidy was designed as a social cushion. In reality, it became the biggest loophole for corruption in our history. Importers claimed payments for cargo that never arrived, depots inflated invoices, and ghost vessels collected billions for phantom deliveries. At the peak, Nigeria was losing more than two trillion naira annually. But the fraud went beyond papers and invoices. Illegal pipelines, some running four kilometres into the sea, were laid to siphon crude directly into ships offshore. These pipelines could not have existed without insider knowledge and silence.

This is where the unions come in. NUPENG and PENGASSAN were not bystanders in the subsidy era. Their structures made them powerful gatekeepers in the downstream chain. Every truck that loaded product at depots paid union levies. Every driver was registered. Every filling station attendant fell under their umbrella. Unions collected fees on each movement of fuel, sometimes as high as fifty thousand naira per truck. Multiply this by thousands of trucks monthly, and you see how the system was sustained. These revenues were rarely audited. They became part of the hidden costs that ordinary Nigerians eventually paid at the pump.

More than the money, unions wielded control through strikes and shutdown threats. At the slightest policy change, they could declare an industrial action that crippled the entire country. Successive governments, fearful of unrest, often backed down and restored subsidies, even when the cost was unbearable. In this way, the unions became enforcers of the subsidy system, protecting the very fraud that drained our treasury.

It is also important to note how unions looked away from the collapse of state refineries. For over thirty years, these refineries failed to work despite billions poured into so-called repairs. Yet, there was no nationwide strike to demand accountability. Why? Because a dead refinery was not against union interest. It meant more imports, more trucks, more depot activity, and more union dues. A functioning refinery would have reduced their leverage.

The illegal pipelines of the Niger Delta tell the same story. These were not amateur efforts. They required technical hands, shift coordination, and tolerance from workers on duty. It is hard to imagine pipelines of such scale being built and operated for years without knowledge from people within the industry. Yet, the unions never raised alarm, never marched on Abuja, never declared a strike. Their silence was complicity.

This is why today’s standoff with Dangote Refinery must be understood in its proper context. The refinery represents a system where crude is supplied directly, refined locally, and products sold transparently. There is no room for hidden levies, no endless imports, no ghost invoices, and no dependence on union-controlled trucking networks. By closing those old doors, Dangote has shaken the foundations of union power.

Of course, workers deserve fair treatment and companies must obey labour laws. But when unions threaten to shut crude and gas supplies to a private refinery, Nigerians must ask: is this truly about protecting workers, or about protecting a system that enriched a few at the expense of millions?

The irony is painful. For years, unions did not fight for Nigerians when subsidy fraud swallowed trillions. They did not fight when illegal pipelines bled our crude. They did not fight when refineries died. But now, when one refinery proves that Nigeria can refine its own fuel, they want to cripple it. That contradiction tells its own story.