OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY LEGISLATIONS AND MANAGEMENT IN SELECTED OIL AND GAS COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This work examined the impact of occupational Health and safety (OHS) regulations and management of occupational health and safety in selected oil and Gas companies in Nigeria. This work verified the state of enforcement of OHS regulations by extracting the striking issues that influences enforcement of OHS regulations in Nigeria. This was done by adopting descriptive and analytical approach which enabled this researcher to administered questionnaire to many respondents at the same time in other to sample their independent opinions as regards to occupational health and safety legislations and their management in selected oil and Gas companies in Nigeria. It’s worthy of note here, to state that our findings revealed amongst other things that the inspectorate Division of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity is responsible for the enforcement of the Factories Act of 1990, while the National Council for Occupational Health and Safety of Nigeria is empowered to administer the proceeding regulations on its behalf by the Labour, Safety, Health and Welfare Bill of 2012. Unfortunately, we observed that the impact of the enforcement authority of the OHS legislation is ineffective, as the key stakeholders pay less attention to OHS regulations; thus, rendering the OHS scheme dysfunctional and unenforceable, at the same time impeding OHS development. For optimum success of OHS in Nigeria, maximum enforcement and compliance with the regulations must be in place and adhered to. This research work, which is based on theoretical analysis, reviewed literatures gathered through desk literature search, google web search and related books on OHS legislations. We found that there is significant impact, negatively or positively, the implementation of the OHS regulations on the management of occupational Health and safety in Nigeria. We also found that, the issues with enforcement of OHS legislation includes but not limited to political influence or interference, bribery and corruption, insecurity, lack of governmental commitment, inadequate manpower and legislation among others. We, therefore, recommends that self-regulatory style of enforcing OHS regulations be adopted by the organizations. We also recommend that more OHS inspectors be recruited; local government authorities empowered to facilitate the enforcement of OHS regulations. Moreover, the study encourages organizations to champion OHS enforcement, as it is beneficial to them.