Pauline Oyibe 
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), has challenged practising journalists and other media stakeholders in the country to deploy their skills in interrogating reports on Nigerian Content performance in the oil and gas industry.
This is said to make sure that the facts behind the resounding success of in-country value addition known to citizens are correct.
Speaking on Monday in Port Harcourt during a one-day workshop themed “The Role of the Media in Maintaining the Tempo of Nigerian Content Implementation,” the Executive Secretary of the NCDMB, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe represented by the General Manager, Corporate Communications and Zonal Coordination, Barr. Esueme Dan Kikile said the Board profoundly appreciates the capacity of the mass media to inform and educate the populace and has chosen fora such as the workshop to bring practitioners up to speed with its activities.
He identified the role of journalists in the sustenance of the local content programme. He assured the journalists that the Board would be supportive whenever they sought such clarification.
He said that the Board has identified the integration of host communities into the oil and gas supply chain as one of the critical enablers of the strategic goal of 70 per cent by 2027, and has decided on appropriate measures.
He reaffirmed that the Board would implement the Back-to-the-Creeks Initiative designed to deepen the contributions of the oil and gas industry to the local communities through support of basic education, making affordable finance accessible to community contractors, equipping youths with relevant industry skills among other support that would benefit the local economy.
He emphasized that the Board has reviewed upwards its Community Contracting Financing Scheme to enable contractors in host communities to secure and execute reasonable contracts in the oil and gas industry.
He said: “We expect the media to interrogate these [policy initiatives and planned interventions] and also follow up and ensure that NCDMB is able to accomplish these because it will help our communities; it will help our young people.”
According to him, “In 2025 NCDMB will be 15 years; looking at what we have been doing, the impact we have made in the oil and gas industry, moving Nigerian Content from less than five per cent in 2010 when we started to now 56 per cent, we have made significant progress.”
“For every N100 spent in the industry by operators and service companies, N56 is now retained in-country in terms of value addition [local assets, goods, expertise, etc. utilised].”
“The single obligor has now been raised from N20 million to N100 million which, as the Board explained, “gives local contractors more opportunities to access higher figures.”
“These measures, among others, are intended to minimise or completely eliminate conflicts, and thus create a peaceful and harmonious operating environment for oil and gas companies. The workshop also had three paper presentations and two sessions of panel discussion.
In the first presentation entitled “Implementing Nigerian Content New Contracting Guidelines,” Engr. Bashir Ahmed, a Supervisor of the Project Certification and Authorisation Directorate (PCAD), NCDMB, threw light on foundational facts regarding the NCDMB and its operations, such as Mandate and Mission Statement, Necessity for a Local Content Framework, a Regulatory Framework, Ministerial Regulations, Presidential Directives, and Guidelines.
He dwelt at length on the Presidential Directives issued by President Ahmed Tinubu in March 2024, in a deliberate effort to reverse the decline in foreign investments in the oil and gas industry.
