The Nigerian government will not privatize its four ailing oil refineries, labor minister Chukwuemeka Wogu said Wednesday, prompting the country’s two powerful oil workers’ unions to declare that they have now dropped plans to embark on a nationwide strike intended to cripple crude oil production and exports. “The Federal Government is not selling the nation’s refineries,” Wogu said in a statement issued after a meeting with the unions in Abuja. The government called the meeting after the unions had threatened to begin a strike this week aimed at forcing the government to reverse earlier announcements by two government agencies that Nigeria would commence the sale of the state-owned refineries by first quarter of this year. “After extensive deliberations on the situation with the refineries, the two parties agreed that…the unions shall not embark on any form of industrial action over the subject matter,” Wogu […]