BEVERLY HILLS, June 03, (THEWILL) – Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, has given assurances that the Federal Government was willing to fast track the development of local capacities in the oil and gas sector.
He stated this on Thursday while declaring open a two-day African local content roundtable, an event hosted by the Nigerian Content, Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
The Minister hinted that the event would afford African oil-producing nations the opportunity to cross-fertilise and share ideas in building as well as develop the sector with adequate African manpower.
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Eng. Simbi Wabote, said the local content board had created no fewer than 3,000 jobs and had also trained millions of Nigerians on various skills upon its establishment.
He noted that the board was primarily established to drive the local content policy of the Federal Government in the oil and gas sector and other critical sectors of the economy.
THEWILL reports that the African local content roundtable had participants from African oil and gas-producing nations and was hosted by the NCDMB in partnership with the African Petroleum Producing Organisation (APPO).
The content board helmsman emphasised that as against the misunderstanding of the term “local content,” the word did not mean an NGO nor was it a Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR.
“Local content is not a CSR. It is not an NGO. What it means is that we’re to create the needed indigenous manpower for the development of the nation’s oil and gas sector and other critical sectors of the economy,” he said. “Through the NOGICD Act we’ve been able to create over 3,000 direct jobs for Nigerians and trained millions in various skills relating to the oil and gas sector and others.”
Wabote restated the need for African oil-producing nations to develop their indigenous capacities, saying that studies had shown that capacity-building, gap analysis, funding, research and development, regulatory framework, amongst others, were key parameters in the actualisation of a sustainable local content policy.
In the same vein, the Secretary-General of APPO, Umar Ibrahim, renewed the call for African nations to continue the development of local content to sustain their oil and gas sectors.
He noted that if the continent’s petroleum-producing nations failed to equip their citizens with adequate local manpower, the continent would lose maximally from her oil and gas reserves when the non-indigenous multinationals left.
“Already some of the non-African oil companies have lately begun to show little or no interest in the oil and gas economies of their African host nations”, he said.
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