Nigerian oil unions end strike

Nigerian unions have suspended a two-day strike in the national oil company after the government agreed to a pay rise and other benefits, a union leader said on Saturday.
The strike had threatened to halt oil shipments from the world's eighth largest exporter, lifting world oil prices, and worsened fuel shortages across Nigeria in the days leading up to a change of government on Tuesday.
"The government has met some of our demands," said Peter Esele, head of the senior staff union PENGASSAN. The government agreed to a 15 percent pay rise for workers in the national oil company and severance benefits relating to the privatisation of Nigeria's largest oil refinery, he said.
The government unexpectedly sold the 210,000 barrel-a-day Port Harcourt refinery to a group of Nigerian and Chinese investors for $561 million last week, one of a series of last-minute sales by outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The strike affected only workers of the national oil company and government oil sector regulator, but it threatened to halt exports because those workers are needed to sign off on deliveries at the country's oil export terminals. Nigerian oil output is already curbed by about one quarter due to an 18-month upsurge in militant attacks on the Western-operated industry.
In a separate protest planned for Monday and Tuesday, oil workers will join other unionists in a sit-at-home protest against widespread rigging in last month's elections, which gave the ruling party a landslide victory.
President-elect Umaru Yar'Adua is due to succeed Obasanjo at an inauguration ceremony in the capital on Tuesday. The government has declared Monday and Tuesday public holidays, so workers will not be expected to go to work anyway. Oil production and exports are unlikely to be affected by the sit-at-home action, unionists said.
International observers said rigging and violence were so widespread in the election that brought Yar'Adua to power that it could not be considered credible. Critics say the little-known governor of Katsina state will face a crisis of legitimacy because of the abuses, but many opposition groups have dropped plans for mass protests.
Many ordinary Nigerians have accepted the result, despite the rigging, and see the flawed poll as the price to pay for the first transfer of power from one civilian leader to another in a country still scarred by decades of military misrule.