Olusola Bello
Despite the efforts at ensuring that Nigerians enjoy the maximum benefits of the oil and gas industry through the establishment of Nigerian Content Development Board NCDMB, some companies are still bent on frustrating this indigenous empowering scheme by refusing to pay the 1 % contract sum to the agency.
The NCDMB is not one of the government agencies that get budgetary allocation; it depends on the 1 percent to carry out its activities across the country.
The forensic audit carried out by the agency in the last three years has revealed that a good number of the oil and gas companies operating in the country are defaulting in to their statutory obligation to the agency.
Over the last three years, the agency has been able to discover 275 non-compliances some of which it is currently dealing with through litigation.
According to Akintunde Adelana, director Monitoring and Evaluation, (NCDMB) who was represented at the Nigerian Content Capacity Building Workshop for Media Stakeholders organized by NCDMB, by barrister Diri, a general manager in his directorate revealed that the forensic audit carried out showed that some companies have failed to honour the law in respect of the levy.
He said prior to the NOGIC Act statistics showed that we had five percent of the Nigerian content value in the entire spent of the oil and gas industry. This shows that there was serious capital flight because expatriates were running the entire gamut of oil and gas including the service industry.
He said the main thrust of the NOGIC ACT is to ensure Nigeria derives maximum value from the $20 billion or more spent or more spent in the oil and gas industry.
From 2017 the agency begins to implement a 10 years strategic programme and what and key thrust of the programme was to be about to retain70 percent of the $20 billion spent in the industry if not more. With these, about 300,000 jobs should be created within the industry and millions of other indirect jobs. There should be major fabrication yards in-country and also put in place the necessary infrastructure that would act as catalysts for other sectors of the economy.
He said the key thing about the local content development is not to Nigerianise the industry but to encourage domiciliation of facilities in-country, domestication and value-adding activities in-country, these are the focus of NCDMB.
Speaking about the Evaluation and Monitoring Directorate, he said; “Our job is to ensure that the country has the required manpower to be able to cover the entire value chain of the oil and gas industry. If you look at the statistic, it is a huge industry from the service industry to downstream, to the international oil companies, it is a huge number that the agency is contending with.”
There are 73 operators in the oil and gas industry, 7,075 service companies and there are other individuals numbering about 224,000 contractors. “This is the number we speak to in terms of monitoring, and it has less than 40 staff to deal with this figure.”
The efforts of NCDMB are contributing to GDP, employment and the overall growth of the economy.
The agency has been able to increase the local value from 5 percent to 42 percent as of today, increase ownership of marine vessels by Nigerians to 40 percent, stimulate flagging registration of vessels in the country.
