On 4 July 1994 the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) called a sympathy strike in support of the release of MKO Abiola — the most economically damaging single labour action ever taken against a Nigerian military government. Within five days fuel queues had paralysed Lagos; within two weeks the refinery output of Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna had collapsed to zero.
Frank Ovie Kokori, NUPENG General Secretary, and Milton Dabibi, PENGASSAN General Secretary, refused to call off the strike when ordered by the Abacha-appointed sole administrator of the NLC, Hassan Lawal. By August 1994 Nigeria was losing an estimated $25m per day in oil exports — total losses across the eight weeks have been put at $1bn (1994 dollars).
On 18 August 1994 General Sani Abacha dissolved the NLC, NUPENG and PENGASSAN executives by decree, installed sole administrators, and arrested Kokori, Dabibi and Wahab Goodluck. Kokori was held at Bama Maximum Security Prison (Borno) under State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree No. 2 of 1984 without trial or visitation for four years and four months — released only on 14 June 1998, six days after Abacha's death. He never recovered his health. Dabibi was released after 3.5 years.
The oil strike of 1994 is the most significant civilian act of resistance against military rule in Nigerian history. It demonstrated that organised labour at the wellhead could shut down the federal revenue base — a lesson Abacha applied through the Petroleum Industry (Special Provisions) Act and the militarisation of the oil-and-gas sector that survived him. Frank Kokori was awarded the OFR in 2008 and died on 7 December 2022. He has never been formally compensated for the four-year detention.