Since its emergence, the National Association of Plants Operators (NAPO) has consistently agitated for recognition and representation of plant operators across Nigeria’s oil and gas, construction, and other critical sectors of the economy. The campaign reached a defining moment in 2022 when the association moved to unionize its members working on the Nigeria Liquefied Naural Gas Limited (NLNG) Train 7 Project, a move that was strongly resisted by the project’s major contractors, Daewoo Engineering and Construction Nigeria Limited and Saipem Contracting Nigeria Limited.
The protracted struggle eventually culminated in NAPO’s registration and gazetting as a trade union—a milestone achieved after years of legal, institutional, and industrial battles. At the forefront of that campaign has been the union’s President General, Harold Benstowe, whose unwavering leadership has kept the movement alive despite numerous challenges.
Throughout the struggle, Benstowe has reportedly been arrested on several occasions by the Nigeria Police Force, the Nigerian Army, and the Department of State Services (DSS) over various allegations. According to him, none of those allegations has resulted in a judicial conviction.
In this exclusive interview with Kristina Reports at its Bonny, Rivers State office, Benstowe sheds light on the issues fuelling the prolonged industrial dispute at the NLNG Train 7 Project. He also explains why NAPO has resolved to embark on a three-day warning strike, alleging that NLNG, its contractors, and other key stakeholders failed to honour the union’s invitation to a conciliation meeting aimed at resolving the lingering labour dispute.
Speaking with Kristina Reports Editor-in-Chief, Godswill Jumbo, the NAPO President General offers an insider’s perspective on the conflict, the union’s demands, and what workers and industry stakeholders should expect in the days ahead. Excerpts:
Please, may we meet you?
My name is Comrade Harold Benstowe, the President General of the National Association of Plant Operators, NAPO.
Over time, this struggle for recognition of NAPO as a trade union and then added to this agitation for investigation into alleged tax fraud in the NLNG Train 7 project has been on. What’s the update as at now?
Right now, NAPO is already a registered trade union, approved and gazetted on November 26th, 2025. That was when NAPO completed her gazette and now fully recognized as a trade union in Nigeria. Besides, not just Nigeria, even the global community have recognized the National Association of Plant Operators efforts to protect Nigerian workers. As you know, in the 2026 Annual Report of the ITUC, the International Trade Union Confederation. It reported the challenges that members of NAPO are facing in the Nigeria NLNG, alongside Daewoo, NUPENG versus Dangote, and the Telecommunications Union versus MTN.
Recently, we saw letters from NAPO being circulated to different agencies and institutions, requesting for conciliation meetings. What was that about?
You know before now, some personnel of the DSS have been releasing fake news about NAPO that we are always aggressive. That we usually go to these companies unannounced and start harassing them, even though they know that this is false. They try to malign the National Association of Plant Operators.
But then, after consultation with labour partners, both local and international, they said we should do it afresh, not minding the effort we have put in before now, but then let it be that we silence these voices of propaganda. And we decided to put that letter up.
First, we put up 14 days notice for Nigeria LNG and her contractors, Daewoo, Saipem and others involved in the Nigerian LNG Train 7 gas plant project to come, let us discuss with the members of NAPO that are working in that project, so that we resolve all the pending labour issues that started from 2022. Today, we are a labour union, recognized by law, and we now use that to make sure that everybody does the proper thing.
After serving them 14 days, that started from the 29th of June to the 13th of July, they didn’t respond. And we now served the next notice on the 15th, for seven days, that expired on the 22nd of July. They never responded, making the 21 days as required by law.
So, we have no option than to now serve them a warning strike notice, which will expire by Friday. And by Monday, our men will be on ground to make sure that this strike action for three days is perfected. The reason for the strike is to address some of these pending issues that include the alleged tax fraud affecting members of NAPO, who form about 90% of the workforce in the Nigeria LNG.
They are asking that they want to know all these taxes that have been deducted from them, Daewoo, especially, that they should come and tell them where is the tax, and, of course, provisional clearance that they got from the Chairman of RIRS does not answer the case of personal income tax, PAYE tax.
Recently, a lot of workers who have shown interest in participating in the upcoming election, they went to INEC office. What they are demanding is their tax for three months or three years to show that they are taxpayers. Will they use this provisional clearance that the RIRS is giving to the Daewoo to answer that requirement of the law? That cannot answer it. Some of our operators who have jobs outside this country, and the embassy is demanding them to show proof that they have been paying tax in Nigeria.
They went to tax office with their payslips and there is no proof, no record to show that these taxes that were deducted and represented in their payslip was sent to the government officially. So, these are the issues, besides the humongous wages that Daewoo presented to DSS and DSS handed over to us because we are already in court, they dragged us to court, that the labour people are disruptive. In fact, they called us militants, they called us cultists, they called us all manner of names and said that we are unlawful, we constitute nuisance in the society. And we were picked, for 89 days I was in custody. And what happened? The court is now asking them to furnish us with the document they intend using to prosecute us.
But fortunately for us, among the documents that they brought to court was the salary voucher, claiming or proving that what the common labourer earns in the NLNG Train 7 project is over four million Naira a month, because if you convert $11.67 per hour, which is the rate, a benchmark for a labourer, then times it by 10 hours in a day they work, and convert those 10 hours times 26 working days in a month, then you now convert it to Naira. It amounts to over four million Naira.
So, the workers are also asking, where is this money? This common labourer, rigger, fabricators, is $17.37 per hour. That is what is on the document. $4,000 to $5,000 in a month, from $2,500 to $5,000 as the case may be, in a month, for different categories of workers, to less than $200 that they are paying them. So, we are asking, the workers are asking, they want their balance, because this is not just a document of quotation. This is a document that bears the names of these workers. It bears the names of these workers, you see their name, you see their badge number, you see their rate per hour, and what they are supposed to earn in a day, in two days.
Now people would also be wondering, fine, there are issues, but is a strike, an industrial action, the only option of addressing this issue? Some people are thinking, is it that NAPO is against national economic development by always disrupting the NLNG projects?
When you talk of patriotism, it is these workers, they are the most patriotic citizens of this country. We have built Train 1 and 2, we have built Train 3, Net project, we have built Train 4, Train 5, Train 6, that was built two decades ago, now Train 7. This is what is now feeding this nation. We are more patriotic. But what the workers are asking, come to a roundtable, let us sit down and discuss, what are we entitled to? This is a situation whereby this money, what they are asking is wages that have already been signed. Now they are saying that, give us the benchmark.
Of course, the $11.67 is the benchmark, not the actual amount. So, if these workers are saying, give us the benchmark, you refuse them, one, to bring in their union, subject to Convention 87 of 1948, the right to freedom of association. The union that they introduced to you, that should represent them, you refuse them to bring that union, even after that union has been established in the month of August 2022, even before any other trade union came into that project.
Secondly, you now refuse them the right to Convention 98, for collective bargaining, that they say, come and sit with our representatives and let us discuss what is our wage. Whatever you agree on that table, with these workers that they elected, with their representatives that they elected, which is in line with the law, that is what counts. And you say no.
Instead, you choose to use the security agencies to abuse the rights of these workers. No wonder, before the ILO, the Minister (of Labour) was begging, in the just concluded 114th session of the ILO Convention in Geneva, just a few weeks ago, the Minister was pleading, when all these challenges were presented to them, that they now classified Nigeria among the 10 worst nations on earth, where workers are not having it good. The Minister pleaded that they are going to resolve it, that they have already started handling some of these matters, and they were given from 9th September.
What the workers are still saying is that, do the right thing. An institution that respects the laws of this country will want to follow the law. That is what makes that institution or establishment also patriotic. But as for now, it is the workers and their union, the National Association of Plant Operators, that are the most patriotic citizens of this country.
We have intimated them, we have written to them; this time when we wrote to them, we made sure the global community is aware, so that they will not start coming again to say, we were not notified, we were not written. So, a troublemaking union will not write. It will not follow the procedures for engagement. This is what we have done, to show that we are the most patriotic citizens. It is they who refuse to come to the roundtable.
So, should they come to the roundtable, what will happen?
It is not something that they are not aware of. This is what they are aware of for the past three years that is causing the problem. So, we have advanced them, they should come and we sit down and discuss. There is nothing that will not be resolved on a roundtable discussion. This time, we are the people giving them the option.
Talking about the strike, how is it going to be?
We told them that over 95% of the workforce, except the foreigners and the management staffs, 95% have chosen the National Association of Plant Operators to represent them. And how do we intend doing it? Everybody will come with their representatives. The operators will have their platform, the welders will have their platform, the fitters will have their platform, the scaffolders, the riggers, the masons, everybody will have their platform.
And when it comes to wages, the management will not engage, appoint their reps to engage with these workers. It is a transparent negotiation. It will not be business as usual, where they will just carry people and travel out of the project environment, search them and give them a document to sign, to sign off the destiny of Nigerian workers. We will not allow that to happen. In fact, the blueprint of this negotiation was taken from the International Union of Operating Engineers, domiciled in the United States of America and in Canada. That is the type of negotiation we are introducing in the Nigerian construction sector, where everybody will be represented by their own representatives.
NAPO, as a trade union, will use her platform to make sure that these individual workers, no matter their discipline, will be properly represented. And in this instance, the management has already made it easier for us, because with the voucher, we now know the rate of what each worker is earning. So, everybody will know the line of what is presented in the voucher.
But as for the welders, the fitters and the operators, which they make just to be blank in that document, we now use the benchmark of the highest person that was revealed in that voucher to now negotiate what is commensurate for their patriotic contribution to building the Nigeria LNG. So that they will not just walk and go home empty-handed. They have contributed their quota and they will have to be adequately compensated as patriotic citizens who are building the economy of this nation.
So, they should not be treated as slaves. They are workers. Yes, that is the slogan of labour after the ILO Convention 114, that we are workers, we are not slaves.
So, what would be your advice to the oil and gas companies that have this labour that all these issues are revolving around? What would you advise them to avoid not to have situations like this?
To Nigeria LNG, we have come a long way. They have known NAPO. We’ve met in several forums and fora, even before the Ministry of Labour, from Port Harcourt, even down to Abuja. We are not new to them. They should do the proper thing.
Under the Tortuous Liability Act, they should advise their contractors, Daewoo and Saipem, because they are creating problems for them in the project environment. Definitely, these companies will come and work and they will go. And it is they themselves that will live with these workers. Do they think these workers will be happy? Every day they watch the plant that they have built, and when they look back, nothing to show for their enormous contribution in building the plant. We don’t want another crisis in Bonny. That is why we are saying that they should make sure, Daewoo and Saipem resolve this matter before they will leave the island. So that these workers will not turn around and become nuisance and start making problems with them. So, we don’t pray for that to happen again. So, they should look at the effort of NAPO as a peacekeeping union, which is mediating so that they will be in good terms with their workers within the catchment area.
They cannot be dashing people money. It is this work that they have worked. The money is there. The prize money is there. What they are asking is no more than the prize money. Even though they are giving even 70% of that prize money. They will make use of it and better their life after the project. And they will not continue to become nuisance.