KEY POINTS
- Shell Nigeria workers barricaded Broad Street office over pay dispute.
- Workers accuse SNEPCo of discrimination and modern-day slavery.
- Protest disrupted traffic and blocked access to Shell’s Lagos building.
Workers of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited, widely known as SNEPCo, gathered outside the company’s office on Broad Street in Lagos on Tuesday morning, barricading the gate and blocking access to the building in a demonstration that brought parts of one of the city’s busiest corridors to a crawl.
The action was coordinated by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, the union that represents senior staff in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. And by most accounts, it was not a spontaneous outburst. The workers had grievances that had been building for a while.
At the center of the dispute is an unresolved Collective Bargaining Agreement between the workers and SNEPCo management. According to PENGASSAN sources, the company had repeatedly failed to honor commitments tied to the agreement, leaving staff with wages and allowances they described as out of step with market realities.
Workers Cite Pay Discrimination, Call Out Management
A protest flyer seen by The Eagle Online laid out the workers’ grievances in blunt terms. The document accused SNEPCo leadership of practicing what it called modern-day slavery, specifically pointing to discrimination in pay against Nigerian staff and what workers described as conscious bias in how the company benchmarks salaries in Nigeria.
One staff member described the car grant situation as emblematic of the problem. The company reportedly offers a grant of 1 million naira to help workers purchase vehicles.
“Can you imagine a company giving a staff N1 million to buy a car now?” the worker said. “Yes, N1 million could look like a huge sum, but it can’t even get you a bicycle not to talk of a car.”
The allowance, workers argued, is a snapshot of a broader pattern: benefits that were perhaps reasonable at some earlier point but have not kept pace with Nigeria’s economic realities.
During the demonstration, protesters initially blocked the gate entirely, preventing anyone from entering. Some workers were briefly allowed in with their vehicles before a change of course saw the protesters reinstate the blockade, this time turning away vehicles belonging to top SNEPCo officials as well.
Shell’s Shrinking Nigeria Footprint Adds Tension
The protest unfolded against the backdrop of Shell’s diminishing footprint in Nigeria. SNEPCo completed a major divestment in recent years, and Shell Nigeria Gas is now described as its primary concern, with operations largely consolidated in Lagos. The company still holds AllOn and Daystar as subsidiaries, both of which focus on energy access financing and also operate from Lagos.
But the scaling back appears to have fueled a sense among workers that management feels less accountable, not more. One staff member put it plainly: management had failed to listen to their demands, and the workers took the decision to barricade the office because of it. Another called on the government to intervene, saying management believed it could act without consequence and was using the situation to sow division among staff.
The protest also rattled Broad Street, a central artery in Lagos Island, as commuters and passersby stopped to observe the standoff outside the Shell building. Traffic backed up in the area as the demonstration restricted movement in and out of the premises.
There was no immediate response from SNEPCo management as of Tuesday morning. PENGASSAN and SNEPCo had not issued a joint statement by the time of publication.
