By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has announced that its workforce went down by 0.3 per cent in the first three months of 2024 to 5,692 from 5,710 in the last quarter of 2023.
The state-owned oil firm, in a report on its staff strength for the first quarter of 2024, stated that 4,632 staff were males, while 1,060 staff were females, representing 81.4 per cent and 18.6 per cent for males and females, respectively.
This was even as analysts projected that skills development and training programs would continue to enhance local content in the second quarter of 2024.
The analysts further warned that activities in the petroleum industry would likely be curtailed by labour disputes and strikes, adding that emphasis on local content development and utilisation remain priorities in the industry.
Meanwhile, at the end of 2023, the NNPC stated that of its 5,710 staffers, 4,648 workers were male, while 1,062 staff were female.
The NNPC noted that in the first quarter of 2024, its top management comprised 115 males and 41 females; at the middle management level, 722 staff were male, while 214 members of staff were female.
Furthermore, in its senior staff cadre, 3,559 employees were males, while 792 employees were females; while in the junior category, males comprised 206 staff, while females comprised 13 staffers.
Further breakdown of its staff composition in the fourth quarter of 2024, the NNPC reported that junior staff category two (JS2) had only one male; Junior staff category one (JS1) had 205 males and 13 females; senior staff seven and six (SS7 and SS6) had 27 males and two females, 72 males and six females, respectively.
Continuing, it noted that 1,091 individuals make up its senior staff five (SS5) category, comprising 907 males and 184 females; SS4 had 202 staff, comprising 28 females and 174 males; SS3 had 586 males and 94 females, bringing total staff in this category to 680.
Senior staff two category (SS2) and senior staff category one (SS1) had 434 and 1,867 staff respectively, with 75 and 403 females, respectively, and 359 and 1,464 males, respectively.
In management cadres 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 (M6, M5, M4 and M3), total staff strength are 685 employees, 251 employees, 118 employees and 32 employees, respectively, with males making up 538 staff, 184 staff, 85 staff and 25 staff, respectively, while females comprise 147 staff, 67 staff, 33 staff and seven staff.
NNPC’s management cadre level 2 (M2) had five staff, consisting of four men and one woman; while management cadre one (M1) had only one male in its employ.
The NNPC had in its previous employee report noted that 81.4 per cent of its total staff in the first quarter of 2023 (4,911 employees) were male, while female workers make up 18.6 per cent (1,121 employees).
In addition, the national oil firm noted that in the second quarter of 2023, its staff strength dropped by 3.27 per cent to 5,835 employees, compared to the first quarter’s staff strength.
The NNPC added that the second-quarter employee figure stood at 4,747 and 1,088 for male and female, respectively.
In the third quarter of 2023, the NNPC reported that its staff strength returned to 6,032, the same point it was at the end of the first quarter of the same year; while it dropped by 5.34 per cent to 5,710 staffers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, comprising 4,648 male workers and 1,062 female workers.
Modupe Gbadeyanka 
Aduragbemi Omiyale