BY WARIYAI DANIEL, YENAGOA.
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) said it has received $150 million in remittance since 2018 after it instituted forensic audit.
NCDMB made the disclosure at a one-day Nigerian Content Sensitization Programme For Law Enforcement Agencies with the theme: Deploying Multi-Institutional Approach to Nigerian Content Enforcement in the Oil and Gas Industry.
The programme which took place in Yenagoa on Tuesday had participation from the 16 Brigade of the Nigerian Army, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Police, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Ministry of Justice.
NCDMB Executive Secretary, Simbi Wabote, in his keynote address, gave the background to the local content law and the journey since 2010 when the NOGICD Act was signed into law.
Wabote disclosed the efforts the board has made towards achieving 70 percent local content in the oil and gas industry and the outlook for the future.
His words: “I think the two most important, the significant one is to enlighten stakeholders on what we do, how we do it and the results we have been able to achieve.
“Then the second one is giving the participants, the law enforcement agents, as you can see, is also to highlight to them their role to play, that they are required to play on the intervention that is needed.
“In order to help us prepare the provision of the act, we have Customs, EFCC, ICPC, DSS, these are all law enforcement agencies; they all have a role to play as we implement the act: so those are the two significant aspects of the workshop.
“For example, EFCC, the law provides for people complying with laws and if there is a breach, you need the authority to help you go after these people, so that’s part of the law for most of them maybe DSS, ICPC as the case maybe.
“Expatriate quota, we don’t give quotas, but we endorse in accordance with the law; we approve request from the oil and gas industry: people like Immigration, we work with them to ensure that the expatriates that we give approval are those that need the desired quota and we go through the biometric process to ensure that we monitor those that were approved.
“For Customs, in this role, again there are certain things that are banned from the oil and gas industry that we cannot import, so we work hand in hand with them to ensure that if those items are brought into the country they are impounded in order to ensure the implementation of the act and we need to collaborate with them in order to be successful with what we do.”
While welcoming the participants to the workshop, NCDMB Head, Legal Services, Naboth Onyesoh, said the aim of the workshop is to strengthen the collaboration with law enforcement agencies.
Onyesoh stated that it was necessary to intimate the law enforcement agencies of the need for compliance and enforcement, which is one of the five pillars of the board.
The workshop involved six paper presentations and a panel session aimed at building collaboration and synergy to ensure remittance of the one percent of all contracts in the upstream of the oil and gas industry since 2010 when the NOGICD Act came into effect.
The board also highlighted the challenges of enforcing compliance with remittances due to a number issues bordering on fraud and economy.