Petroleum Tanker Drivers, an affiliate union of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, has disowned a group known as the PTD Elders amid a feud with Dangote Refinery.

PTD described the group as fake impostors hired to wreak havoc on the union.

Petroleum drivers from the Kaduna, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Warri zones disclosed this in a briefing on Friday.

They accused a faceless group of peddling falsehoods to members of the public.

Comrade Bashir Izalan said he was surprised that a group was laying claim to membership of the PTD-NUPENG.

He said: “We don’t have anything like PTD Elders in the hierarchy of PTD-NUPENG. We don’t know them.

The only recognised national chairman we know is Comrade Egbon.

His leadership is transparent; he gives us a sense of belonging because we can go anywhere in the country and feel at home. If we fall sick, we have insurance and hospitals where we would be treated.”

Also, Itanola Abiodun stressed that the impostors do not belong to the union and appealed to security agents to fish them out for prosecution.

According to him: “Everybody who belongs to a union has a unit and zone where that unit is located. Then, they have the PTD branch. Those units where they claimed they come from do not exist. We in those zones do not know them.

Their names are not known to us at all. They should mention the units they belong to for discerning minds to vouch for their authenticity.

They cannot even say the units or zone they belong to. They are not speaking for us. They are impostors, hired to wreak havoc in our union,” he said.

UGAMATV recalls that Williams Akporeha and Afolabi Olawale, president and general secretary of NUPENG respectively, had in a statement last week alerted members of the public and security agents that the so-called PTD Elders Forum are infiltrators with sinister motives to cause disaffection within the ranks of the genuine leadership of the Tanker Drivers Branch of NUPENG.

This comes amid the feud between NUPENG and Dangote Refinery over the unionisation of the latter’s workers.

NUPENG had embarked on a strike before the federal government intervened to remedy the situation.

However, Dangote Refinery last month secured an interim court order to stop NUPENG from carrying out industrial action against the oil firm.