THE LAST GOODBYE

Eferobo delivered the baby, named Splendor, in January 2023 in Bayelsa. Her happy husband then promised that he would soon journey down to the state to see her and the baby. But he never did. He never had the opportunity. His supervisors — Phillips, Daniel and Lastman, an Indian, at Chemie-Tech DMC (BR), one of the subcontractors chosen to work on the refinery project, directed Boukeme to climb a high-rise “defective scaffold” mounted in an “unsafe work environment” with “poor illumination” on Sunday, July 16, 2023, according to an incident report number DPRP/2023/02/FAT obtained by FIJ.

Consequently, he “suffered a fatal fall”, dying on the spot, unable to fulfil the promises of further education and family plans he had discussed with his wife. What his family got in return was N5 million ($3,413, per the exchange rate in August 2023), paid by Chemie-Tech DMC (BR). FIJ also obtained a compensation agreement that detailed the sharing formula for the cold money.

“My husband was a very heartwarming and gentle person,” Eferobo told FIJ. “All his plan was to give us a better life. He was planning to set up a good business for me. We were already working towards that.”

“He was even making plans for me to further my education. But my world has been gloomy since he died, leaving only me with the duty of raising our daughter,” she lamented.

“No amount of compensation can take away the pain in my heart as I speak with you. It’s a long story. I’ve not heard anything from the company since they sent the money. Nobody from his company attended his burial, and not a single phone call came to us from them to know the welfare of my baby.”

LEFT TO DIE: NOBODY TO HELP FOR 30 MINS

Eferobo only got to know of her husband’s death through a colleague of his, who said Boukeme fell down from a scaffold while working. She started sensing the worst because she had worked in the Dangote Fertiliser Limited (DFL) before and knew that it was usually death or permanent injury if a scaffolder fell down.

“I asked him to let me know if he was alive or dead,” Eferobo said.

“I was told he writhed in pain for about 30 minutes at the same spot before giving up. He died as a result of gross negligence and poor safety standards. We asked for his death certificate, but the company never gave it to us.

“His friend told me that they had to protest and everybody was shouting on top of their voices for the release of his body because they had kept it somewhere. They might not have released his corpse, and we would not have been aware of his death.”

Bloody images obtained from Okechukwu Ojum, one of Boukeme’s colleagues who survived the collapse, showed a site worker in an overall trying to make Boukeme sit down. He explained that they had not belted themselves when the scaffold collapsed.

Musa Sodiq, 29, and Udoyen Samuel, both of whom suffered fractures, were the two other workers who fell with Boukeme on that fateful day. They corroborated the widow’s explanation that his husband was not taken to the hospital immediately. FIJ also obtained an image of the defective scaffold.

‘TAKE THE MONEY OR GET DENIED’

Eferobo, who is now a point of sale (PoS) operator in Port-Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, was reluctant to speak with FIJ because she felt the content of a compensation agreement between her family and the company on the death of her husband had bound them from saying anything about the incident. 

“They said the agreement is final and we are prevented from talking about it again,” she said.

“The family hereby undertake, agree and confirm that upon the receipt of the said sum of N5,000,000 (Five Million Naira), the company is hereby released from ALL liabilities, claims, adverse or otherwise, whether under the Employee Compensation Act/Law operating in Lagos State or the Federal Republic of Nigeria OR such other laws as may be prescribed in Nigeria in perpetuity,” paragraph 6(b) of the said agreement reads.

Eferobo told FIJ that she and Awoba Briggs, her mother-in-law, were somehow intimidated into accepting that amount, as their unwillingness could make the company deny knowing Boukeme, who was an undocumented worker.

“The people from the company told my mother-in-law that the company could deny ever knowing him because he was an undocumented labourer; he did not have a company identity card.

“It was so upsetting that my mother-in-law said she was tired of frequenting Lagos, where the talk was taking place. I could not join her on the journey because my baby was just few months old then. I only followed the conversation on the phone, and we then agreed to take it, even though it was a paltry sum.”

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According to the payment document, N3,006,000 of the money was given to Eferobo and her baby. A part of the money was to cover burial expenses, and the rest was shared by Boukeme’s parents and a Lagos-based lawyer who drafted the document.

UNEXPLAINED DEATHS

Unlike Eferobo, who got compensation, some families got nothing. Some may not even be aware of the death of their loved ones, according to FIJ’s sources.

Nicholas George, another indigene of Bayelsa State, died at work about four years ago. He was working with Onshore Construction Company, a contractor in the refinery. His relatives had no correct details of how he died. Glory, his brother-in-law, who was then working in the Dangote Fertiliser plant situated not far from the refinery, was called some hours after he the incident.

To transport George’s remains to Bayelsa State, Glory coughed up about N300,000. Of this amount, two administrative workers with Onshore gave him N70,000. The company management neither contributed to the money nor paid any form of compensation to the family. The family alone bore the misery that came with the loss and transporting George’s body home.

“I was at my workplace at Fertiliser (Dangote Fertiliser Plant) when a message came to me that someone had died in the refinery. There is something called ‘finish-and-go’ (a work arrangement that allows a worker to leave once they complete the assigned task instead of waiting until closing time),” said Glory.

“I was told that he completed the finish-and-go at about 2 or 3 pm on that day and he was set to leave. They said they had warned him not to board any other bus than their staff bus. I can’t really say whether he was killed while trying to follow a bus to the refinery’s gate or not. The explanation offered was not straightforward to me. I don’t know the connection between that and his death. But it was late before I got the information.

“It was around 9 pm. A policeman was there, and I took his body to a mortuary along the Ijebu-Ode road. I was in a state of shock and was desperate for financial assistance to bus him home for burial but could not get more than N70,000 from two staff of the company. Not even a half-hearted support came from the company. I spent over N300,000 to take him home.”

Glory told FIJ that George’s mother had left everything to God and was not ready to speak about it again.

DEATH ON DAY 3 OF WORK — AND MORE

In 2022, Umar Muhammad* stopped working at China National Chemical Engineering Seventh Construction Co., Ltd. (CC7) as a “helper”. For context, helpers are unskilled workers engaged to assist skilled workers and run errands on sites. Before then, he had worked with AG-Dangote Construction Company Ltd., a subsidiary of the Dangote Group. He said he had never seen any company where workers died in such a large number as the refinery.

“No be small people dey die here. Plenty souls don lost for the refinery. I have never seen any company where people dey die like that,” Muhammad said in Pidgin during one of FIJ’s numerous visits to Ibeju-Lekki.

According to Muhammad, a former colleague of his died on their third day of work at CC-7 about five years earlier.

“One of my colleagues from Nasarawa State died in my presence. He was working on a scaffold and fell down. He died instantly. I don’t know his real name, but his nickname, with which we all used to call him, was ‘OBO’. The last thing I heard about him was that his body was taken to his village,” Mohammad, an Adamawa State-born Lagos resident, told FIJ in May.

DANGOTE GROUP, AN ‘ANTI-UNION COMPANY’

“We were very devastated seeing a colleague fall and die. Every ounce of energy in us to continue working vanished immediately. Regardless, there was no moment for us to pay him our last respect, as we had to continue our day’s work as if nothing had happened. They [the company] hired and fired at will; there was no one to complain to, and no one wanted to be fired. That incident still sticks in my memory.”

Chris Onyeka, the Assistant General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), told FIJ that the Dangote Group was an anti-workers’ union company, saying it had refused to allow its construction workers have a union that could look after their welfare. He said that any company that prevents its workers from belonging to an organised union “has something to hide”.

“Any organisation that is not union-friendly is hiding something. That organisation doesn’t want to be held accountable through the laws governing industrial relations in Nigeria. It is generally known that only organised workers can protect themselves. That being the case, if an organisation refuses to let its workers belong to a trade union, that organisation is working against the interests of its workers, and it has something to hide,” Onyeka, who is also on the desk of the NLC’s Occupational Hazards and Health Unit, said. “That is what Dangote, as an organisation, has exposed itself to.”

“We have made efforts to organise construction unions in that refinery, as a construction space. There was a need for construction unions to be part of the activities in that place, but Dangote frustrated the moves. Without trade unions in place, you find out that reporting cases of hazards and abuses becomes very difficult. The safety and health issues of workers in that company cannot be monitored effectively, especially when you know that the Federal Ministry of Labour has a manpower challenge to properly implement the Factory Act.

“I remember that about six years ago, we had cases reported by the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria regarding how some of their members who got jobs as contract workers there were treated. We also heard a case of how about 22 Indians were mistreated there. That was when the construction was still going on, and we handed over the issues to the unions that were supposed to be involved.”

These cases of unexplained deaths are far from isolated. These are familiar experiences for virtually every worker during the construction of the facility. For this investigation, FIJ interviewed more than 15 former and present workers at the company. The death of Uwem Jeremiah from Akwa Ibom State, whose colleagues described as “a nice man”, was announced on Facebook on February 25, 2019. At the time of his death, Jeremiah was working with the XCMG Machinery in the refinery.

According to Bestman Odiri, one of Jeremiah’s former colleagues, he complained of a slight headache to his wife one fateful day and he was taken to the Akodo General Hospital, which was close to the refinery. Called Jerry by his colleagues, he passed on at the hospital, leaving behind his and a baby.

Odiri said he didn’t know anything about whether the company paid any social benefits to Uwem’s family or participated in his burial. FIJ was unable to link up with the woman who had a baby for Jeremiah for more information on what the company did or did not do following her husband’s death. XCMG Machinery did not respond to repeated requests via email and text messages for comments.

A food vendor at the refinery also narrated the story of one woman that FIJ was unable to independently verify. The food vendor explained during one of our reporters’ visits to Ibeju-Lekki that some workers, who were her customers, narrated how a woman went into the refinery complex with a photo of her missing son, a manual worker in the company. The woman reportedly said that it had been some months since she last saw her child. This food vendor’s customers told the woman that three things might have happened: either her son had died at work, had been extra-judicially killed or had been accused of a crime and taken to prison, as security operatives usually framed people up over phantom offences.

The company, in response to FIJ’s inquiry, has, however, described the allegation of extrajudicial killings as “unfounded”. The response is copiously covered in the latter part of this report.

N40,000 AS COMPENSATION FOR LOSING A LOVED ONE

Abosede Mariam*, who had worked as a key administrative staffer with the CC7, lamented the ridiculous compensation some bereaved families were paid.

“Although I heard of many injuries and deaths during my time there, I did not see them personally. I worked in the office, and I was hardly on site,” said Mariam.

“It wasn’t a good place to work because the working hours were extreme and the conditions were quite unfavourable. I heard of some workers who died and others sustained injuries because a crane dropped heavy materials on them. I’ve heard of cases of families who were paid as little as N40,000 or N50,000 as compensation after they lost their relatives. It was that bad.”

‘MANY UNKNOWN, UNREPORTED DEATHS’

This account was corroborated by another source. FIJ learned that many more workers’ deaths remained unknown and unreported to their families. An active worker with one of the local construction firms in the refinery told FIJ that “if a a worker dies and it is difficult to track their family, the company takes their body to a morgue”.

Another source, a security guard, said, “Many people have died here without the awareness of their families. Their families would just believe that their children are working in Lagos without knowing that they have died. The toll this refinery has taken on manual workers’ lives is unimaginable, and this should be of concern to the government.”

To bring the project to life, Dangote engaged different engineering, procurement and construction firms. Some of these companies then involved local labour suppliers to recruit workers for site and administrative works. These job opportunities resulted in a massive internal migration across the nooks and crannies of Nigeria, as thousands of skilled and unskilled, economically active Nigerians took up various construction jobs in the company.

While the actual figure of construction workers engaged in the facility might prove difficult to pinpoint owing to poor documentation, Aliko Dangote, President/Chief Executive of Dangote Group, said that the project employed about 29,000 Nigerians.

“When we started the project, we were supposed to bring a lot of foreign workers, but as we speak today, we have less than 11,000 expatriates. We have about 29,000 Nigerian workers that are getting massive training,” he said.

With the exception of the figures frequently stated by the company, no federal agency appears to have any official data on the number of manual workers the refinery employed, much less the number of deaths and injuries recorded. Workers have decried the inhumane treatment many of them were subjected to at the hands of their foreign and local employers, as well as security operatives protecting the facility. Active citizens have also raised the alarm over the extreme conditions of work in the facility over the years. But no government institution has spoken or reacted in any way to these painful experiences of the workers.

On June 5, 2023, many Nigerians converged under a post by a journalist on X known as 99% OPPRESSED to tell sordid tales about workers’ precarious conditions in the refinery.

The post garnered over 1.4 million views. On September 21, 2019, an X user familiar with happenings in the refinery at the time tweeted that the death rate at the CC7 had reached 20.

“The 20th Nigerian just died this morning in that same company (CC7),” the tweet read in part. (Editor’s note: The user told our reporter in a phone conversation on Friday, June 7, that she felt intimidated after she made the post in 2019, adding that she thought she had deleted the tweet. After speaking with our reporter, she deleted the tweet.)

Complaints of death, injuries or deliberate exploitation in the refinery are common, yet they are unaddressed either by the company or appropriate government institutions to demand accountability.

In 2019 and 2020, the National Directorate of Employment, a federal agency domiciled in the Ministry of Labour and Employment, organised a training programme for 400 skilled workers in partnership with Dangote Group, and the successful trainees got jobs in the refinery. But the NDE said its mandate did not include post-training supervision to follow up with the welfare and social security of the workers.

“NDE doesn’t give a direct job but uses its facilities to help organisations train people on blue-collar jobs,” said Israel Adekitan, the NDE spokesperson, when contacted on June 16.

“If there are occupational hazard situations or social security settlements between the company and the workers, it is not the responsibility of the NDE to get involved. It is the job of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) to attend to issues like that.”

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LABOUR LAW VIOLATIONS AND MEDIA PR 

The oil company has refused to account for these issues and also failed to report the deaths and injuries of workers to the appropriate government institutions, although doing so is a legal requirement, according to the Employees’ Compensation Act. This failure extends to its contractors and subcontractors in the refinery.

The act mandates that “an employer shall, immediately, report the death of an employee arising out of and in the course of employment to the Board and to the local representative of the Board”.

The NSITF, a federal agency with a mandate to guarantee fair and adequate compensation for all insured employees in case of any “injury, disease, disability or death arising out of or in the course of employment”, told FIJ none of the companies mentioned in this report had insured their employees with them.

“I was directed to call you in response to a letter you sent to us regarding information about some companies. You were asking about whether the Dangote refinery, Onshore Construction Company, China National Engineering Construction Company and Chemie-Tech DMC have insured their workers with us. From the response that we got from the compliance department, these other companies, except the refinery, are not registered with us,” a female official of the NSITF, who identified as Onyeka, told FIJ on the phone on July 22.

FIJ had earlier sent a Freedom of Information request to the agency on June 11, and to Nwachukwu Ngige, the agency’s spokesperson, on June 12.

Onyeka promised to provide information about the insurance status of the refinery with the NSITF on July 23, but she had not done that as of publication time.

On February 23, 2019, a former labourer in the refinery, whose Facebook profile suggested he was from Benue State, decried the rate of workers’ deaths in the company, saying that they felt like leaving the job.

But Dangote has been commended by policymakers for his investment drive. Since Buhari cut the refinery’s ribbon in 2023, it has stayed consistently in the news, courtesy of its mega media machinery, principally led by Aliko Dangote himself, the 144th world’s richest on Forbes’ 2024 ranking. Aside from his regular media appearances, he hosted 102 journalists drawn from various media outlets in the country to a guided media tour of the fertiliser plant and the refinery on July 15.

In all the local and foreign media interviews and business gatherings he has appeared in post-inauguration, not once has Dangote talked about the numerous human rights abuses against the labourers or provision of any dedicated funds to settle workers’ complaints.

‘WHY BRING A DEAD PERSON’S STORY UP AGAIN’?

The government and its institutions, too, have turned a blind eye and failed to interrogate the workers’ challenges, despite numerous visits by influential people in the country to the facility. Leading the Nigerian Senate leadership on a guided tour of the infrastructure on June 8, Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, said he pitied Dangote because his (Dangote) friends would be wondering how he succeeded in the project.

“Mr. Dangote, I pity you a lot because even your friends will envy you simply because they will keep wondering, ‘How can you succeed when nations, and continents have failed?’” Akpabio said.

“His [Dangote] adherence to quality is what impresses me. The laboratories I’ve seen here and even the explanation from the social media that Belgium has finally realised the need to stop the exportation of bad fuel from their country to Nigeria.”

Meanwhile, there are several social media posts on workers who lost their lives and numerous complaints. After contacting some past workers via instant messaging apps, our reporter got blocked once he explained the specific reason he was chatting with them. The fear of their safety might have informed this reaction. Before blocking him on Facebook Messenger in May, an old worker said, “Why bring a dead person’s story up again? Don’t talk to me again.”

Some workers did not respond to the reporter’s requests.

Accounts provided by the sources interviewed for this story and anecdotal messages extracted from some workers’ social media profiles suggested that manual workers’ suspicious deaths recorded during the construction of the refinery was highly significant. However, the company told FIJ that “a total of 20 fatalities were recorded” between 2016 and 2023.

REFINERY MANAGEMENT: WE RECORDED 20 DEATHS, SEVERAL OTHER MEDICAL CASES

FIJ sent a detailed list of questions arising from its investigation to the company via its corporate communications email address on June 10, but it wasn’t delivered. Our reporter then sent the questions as a text message to Anthony Chiejina, Group Chief Branding and Communications Officer, Dangote Group, on the same day.

“A total of 20 fatalities, unfortunately, were recorded from 2016 till year-end 2023. About 10 fatalities occurred during peak of construction [2017-2019], which was when we had a lot of high risk/hazardous construction activities attended to by high workforce volume with high manhours,” Chiejina wrote in response to FIJ without providing any data about the said 20 fatalities. It is unclear whether the deceased workers identified in this story were among the 20 declared by the company.

“Things significantly improved as we concluded the construction work towards commissioning operations. Also, accident occurrences reduced. For example, zero fatality in 2024 (from 1st January to 13th June 2024),” he added.

Several workers, including Ojum, Sodiq and Samuel, who fell from a scaffolder and broke their legs in 2023, had various medical situations in the course of their work.

The company said “49 medical treatment cases and 21 lost time injuries occurred”, adding that “this also mainly happened in the peak of construction (2017-2019) and this has significantly reduced.”

When asked how the refinery arrived at that total employment figures, given the documentation issues raised in this investigation, the company said the figure fluctuated from year to year.

“It is an approximate, aggregated average number which fluctuated from year to year. Some [workers] were directly employed whilst others were sub-contractors and employed directly by contractors including temporary staff,” the company said.

Responding to a question on how many workers had injuries, including permanent disabilities, the company said that “49 medical treatment cases and 21 lost time injuries” were recorded. “This also mainly happened in the peak of construction (2017-2019) and this significantly reduced.”

Lost Time Injury (LTI) means any work-related injury or illness that temporarily renders an employee unable to perform their duty and makes them absent from work for some time, depending on the degree of the injury.

On compensation, the company claimed it had special compensation funds and all the families affected had been “duly compensated”.

“Those involved in fatal incidents and their families were duly compensated as part of HR welfare process,” Chiejina said.

But Glory’s family, one of the sources interviewed for this story, was never compensated.

The company did not insure all the 29,000 engaged workers. “Only the direct employees were covered with NSITF,” said Chiejina.

Asked whether it was part of the company’s agreement with its contractors that manual workers had to be insured according to local laws, Chiejina answered in the affirmative. “Contractors have their insurance/funding cover for their staff and subcontractors and they fulfil their obligations mediated by the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA),” he said.

But the NSITF told FIJ that none of the contractors named in this story was in its records.

Responding to extrajudicial killings and illegal detention by security officers in the refinery sources told FIJ, the company said they were unfounded. “These allegations are unfounded. Cases were referred to the state security authorities,” said the company spokesperson.

‘COMPENSATION IS NON-NEGOTIABLE’

Funds for compensation are a primary element of any major construction work, and they are non-negotiable, according to Elijah Apertso, an Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria-certified HSE officer.

Apertso said accidents and other hazards happen at workplaces due to three-pronged factors. “Occurrences of accidents at workplaces sometimes start from a company’s top management. On the other hand, workers also play a role. While focusing on project timelines, some companies might march down on certain safety procedures, even if the health and safety personnel insist the right things are done,” he said. “This kind of compromise gives rise to accidents or other hazards.”

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“On workers’ part, let me put it simply: stubbornness. Some workers tend to prove stubborn if you caution them after finding out that they are into an unsafe act or that their behaviour can give rise to an unsafe condition. They might tell you that they have been doing the job for years and you can’t teach them their job.

“The competence of a safety officer is key. A safety officer must be able to identify risks and develop appropriate models to enforce compliance. If a safety officer does not know what to do at the right time or is not smart enough to identify risks timely, it will not be right on the part of the company.

“Therefore, when you talk about HSE regulations, employee compensation is crucial. Regardless of which of the factors causes a hazard to a worker, compensation is non-negotiable, and the refinery management needs not be told before implementing it.”

Editor’s Note: Asterisked names have been changed for the sources’ safety.

This story was produced with support from the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under the Collaborative Media Engagement for Development Inclusivity and Accountability project (CMEDIA) funded by the MacArthur Foundation.