Nigeria Content Online

The Nigerian
content policy is not about allocation of marginal oil blocks to
Nigerians, but the promotion of the Nigerian service companies’
capacity to participate effectively in the development of the country’s
oil and gas industry, a senior official has said.

Ernest Nwapa, the
executive secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring
Board (NCDMB), said this in Kaduna, Kaduna State, at the Nigeria Bar
Association (NBA) conference.

Mr. Nwapa noted
that with international oil companies controlling over 80 percent of
the petroleum industry business in Nigeria, government is not satisfied
that indigenous operators are left to be contented with some left over
jobs outsourced from their service arms.

He said the board
has agreed to partner with the NBA towards the effective implementation
of the Nigerian Content Act, recently approved by President Goodluck
Jonathan.

A new mindset is necessary

He added that the
effective implementation of the Act required a change of mindset by
Nigerians, some of who still believe that it is impracticable for
Nigerians to perform on the major jobs in the oil and gas industry,
pointing out that only through collaboration with bodies like the NBA,
Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), and Nigerian Maritime
Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) that the provisions of the
Act would be successfully implemented.

He urged lawyers to
always show national interest when handling briefs for clients,
pointing out that some unpatriotic elements would want to manipulate
documents on their ownership of equipment used for work in the industry
as required by the Act. This, he argued, is capable of impeding the
achievement of the objectives of the law.

The board will also
involve the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Nigerian Customs
Service (NCS) and other relevant government agencies in the
verification of the personnel and assets of all operating and service
companies in the Nigerian oil and gas industry as a way of ensuring
that beneficiaries are up-to-date in their obligations to government.

Nwapa also harped
on the need for the building of standard pipe mills in Nigeria to
service the oil and gas industry, to provide pipes for future projects
like the planned Nigerian Gas Master Plan (NGMP) and the Trans Saharan
Gas Pipeline.

To demonstrate
government’s commitment to support local investors, he said the NCDMB
is insisting that operating and service companies must not be allowed
to import pipes for their projects until the combined capacity of
existing and prospective developers of local pipe mills has been
exhausted.

The Nigerian
Content Act, he emphasised, was not government’s attempt to drive away
the multinationals from the country’s oil and gas industry. Rather, it
is to attract more investments into the industry, adding that the
provisions of the Act expects the multinationals to do the jobs in
Nigeria, which will ultimately be cheaper for their operations and
yield mutual benefit for the companies and the Nigerian economy.

George Etomi, chairman of the section on Business Law of the NBA,
said it was critical for the NBA to support the implementation of the
Nigerian Content Act, saying this was a strategic effort to raise the
capacity and standards of the indigenous operators to compete globally,
citing the examples of countries like Malaysia and Brazil where such
laws have been used to develop their economies in the recent past.