By John Austin Unachukwu
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has vowed to enforce local content for lawyers especially in the oil and gas sector, as defaulters would be sanctioned through the courts.
NCDMB Director, Legal Services, Muhammed Umar said contracts made in disregard of local legal participation could be cancelled or the defaulter would pay five per cent of the contract value as a fine.
Umar spoke during a recent one-day symposium organised by the NBA-SBL and NCDMB with the theme: NOGICD ACT-Strides: Challenges and opportunities.
There it was revealed that the NCDMB had partnered with NBA-SBL to drive the enforcement of local content for lawyers.
“If you don’t comply (with local content for lawyers) and we do our best to engage you, the board will have no other option but to take you before the court where sanction would be applied. Either the contract is cancelled or you pay five per cent of the contract value as a fine. We keep doing our best and we hope we will make progress with time.
“Before the Act, things were done in a different way, after the Act, we try to change the way things are done. In the past you had businessmen, portfolio, service companies that would take a job in Nigeria and outsource the entire job out of the country but now we insist that jobs be done in Nigeria, by Nigerians using Nigerian goods or Nigerian services. There would be challenges but those who understand what is good for the country are compliant,” Umar explained.
NBA-SBL Chairman Ayuli Jemide said the NBA-SBL noticed that the Nigerian content for lawyers was not really being enforced, so the body had been in engagement with the NCDMB and part of that engagement is to create awareness about the activities generally and as it pertains to lawyers.
Thus, the NBA-SBL entered a strategic partnership with the NCDMB in a bid to enforce the Nigerian content for lawyers.
“The long-term gain is that if we can work with the NCDMB to ensure the Nigerian content development for lawyers is properly enforced. This will improve thousands of Nigerian law firms and Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, (GDP). We will keep engaging to make enforcement successful.”
Also speaking, NCDMB Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, Akintunde Adelana, stated that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Development Act, 2010 had great potential for lawyers.
“So, at this point, we need lawyers to support the interpretation of the Act and also to drive compliance in the industry in terms of implementation of the provisions of the act. Lawyers play key roles in the activities of the oil and gas industry; putting together contracts here and there, interpreting the Act because this is a global industry and there are a lot of legal documents arising from oil and gas business in several sectors of the economy and in several environments in the world. Lawyers are very relevant in this area. So, there are a lot of opportunities for Nigerian lawyers and this partnership will help to drive that’’.
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