Nigeria’s unemployment challenges seem inconsequential to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) that recently embarked on a wild goose chase of employing foreign consultants to manage their operations. In their view, the move will engender efficiency and quick service delivery in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
Iyowuna Victor Briggs, Managing Director of NPDC, represented by Malam Hamidu Namtari, the company’s executive director, engineering and technical services division at the 1st NPDC Quarterly Contractors’ Forum in Benin City, Edo State, attributed the decision to the need to face the “challenges of the company’s rapid expansion and the need to effectively manage the large number of assets recently assigned to it.”
It is doubtful whether NPDC would have embarked on the action without the approval of its principal, the NNPC. But, why would the corporation approve such a move at this point in time when the country is faced with serious graduate unemployment problems? The NNPC started, ab initio, as Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC) on April 1, 1971 through Decree no. 18 of 1971. It is sad that the corporation has departed from its enabling mandate of training indigenous workers; and also that of encouraging indigenous participation in the development of infrastructure for the industry, among others, with its current emphasis on foreign consultants.
Even after the name NNOC was changed to NNPC on April 1, 1977, the crucial statutory brief of the corporation on local manpower content development in the discharge of exploratory, production, refining, marketing, transportation, and distribution of petroleum products was not altered. Why should a subsidiary of a corporation that is saddled with this important responsibility go to the ridiculous level of employing foreign consultants to manage its operations? Exploration and management of oil by the corporation has spanned over four decades; so, the need for foreign experts to survive teething problems is no longer tenable.
What has happened to the Local Contents Law? Could it be proved that no Nigerian exists with the requisite competence to handle efficiently the operations of the NPDC? If yes, what this means is that the NNPC has abandoned its responsibility of training indigenous manpower to handle such tasks.
What is more confounding is that NNPC and its subsidiaries ought to be the driving force behind the country’s economic development. But they are all, sadly, pursuing neo-colonial employment policy that negates the contents of NNPC’s enabling Act. The NNPC, over time, has become renowned for being a cesspit of corruption necessitating its being treated with disdain by many Nigerians.
The employment of the so-called internationally certified consultants to help upgrade its operations and strategies has confirmed the corporation as a laboratory for fraud. We ask again: what happened to successive budgets of the corporation meant for manpower training and development of Nigerians in requisite areas of operations in the oil industry? If by now NNPC and its subsidiaries still claim not to have competent, internationally recognised local manpower to tidy up its operations, then, there is something wrong somewhere with the entire corporation.
We believe that NNPC and, by extension, its subsidiaries, have failed the competence and probity tests to manage the country’s oil exploration, marketing and revenue generation. The pointer is that not less than 20 per cent of the country’s revenue is wasted and unaccounted for by the corporation. Perhaps, the controversy over the phantom fuel subsidy would be unnecessary if NNPC is scrapped forthwith. We see no sense in the use of foreign consultants by these oil firms.