Bonny Island, home to Nigeria’s oil and gas behemoths and location of the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) erupted in protest Saturday morning with multitude of workers stranded at the Willbross Junction, not able to make their way to their various work sites. Kristina Reports Security Correspondent, Susan Pepple was on hand to speak with the Chairman, Bonny Kingdom Professionals, Mr. Godson Banigo to get some perspective as to the reason for the protest. It is here served as e dey hot:

Please may we meet you?

My name is Godson Banigo, I am the Chairman of Bonny Kingdom Professionals, a kingdom based union representing the kingdom on workers affairs and their incentives.

Can you tell me what’s happening?

We came to realize that some members of the kingdom were assigned to be employed in Saipem for over a month and are not employed yet and from our investigation and findings, Saipem is flooded with people we don’t know where they came from. But the ones that we know are designated to Saipem have not been employed up till now. So, many of them are at home. The trade associations are deprived of their benefits of having full control of their members who are engaged in the company, and the community has also resolved that the company should have a baseline salary for which they will pay people in Bonny Kingdom.

So, these are the concerns that arose that made everybody to be protesting. But the situation is under control, nothing has gotten out of hand and nothing will get out of hand by the grace of God. We are sending this warning and trying to ensure that these companies are communicated with accordingly. We expect that this will lead to a roundtable discussion. They’ve been called severally for discussion. I think they kept deaf ears probably because they feel is not necessary. But it is okay. We are on the matter. There’s no problem it is just dialogue. Bonny is known for dialogue. We will only sit and look at things and then come up with a resolution

What do you stand to achieve by stopping the workers from going to work?

We are not really stopping to get to their work places. We only asked that the buses should be sent to the palace because we want the attention of the company’s contractors in the palace so we can discuss with our fathers, the chiefs, to tell us the way forward. As you can see, it appears like we are operating without any direction.

Does this have anything to do with the current salary of the workers?

Yes, I noted that, I said the Kingdom has come up on what the salary structure should be in Bonny as regards the oil and gas environment. This is because the oil and gas sector is the same everywhere in the world. We noticed that our people in Bonny are paid insignificantly minimal and it shouldn’t be so.