Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Geoscape are partnering to train young graduates to boost their skills and capacity.
Geoscape Head of Contracts and Assets Morenike Jupi-Igbeka told The Nation at an event in Lagos that the training is mandatory.
She said Geoscape is mandated by the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act (NOGICD) Act to ensure that oil and gas operators are giving back to the economy by developing the economy, capacity and technology, which will combine to retain substantial value of contracts in-country.
She said: “The trainees are graduates of engineering, geology, and physics – applied sciences generally. They are being trained so that they can fit into the oil and gas industry. The essence of the training is to reduce the number of expatriates that come into Nigeria to take up jobs from our locals.
“According to NCDMB, any company that is doing a contract of certain threshold in the industry must set aside minimum of about two per cent of the contract sum for training to develop capacity. That is what we are doing because we have a contract we are doing for Chevron. Geoscape won a contract and we are mandated by the law and by Chevron who owns the project to set aside some proceeds of the contract to train some youths.
“We were given a list of about 60 people. They wrote a test and we selected 22 to train for a year – six months for classroom and six months for hands-on-the-job. According to the NOGICD law, they will be trained along the lines of what the project is about and to ensure that they get international certifications. We are not mandated to employ them if we don’t have space, but we have given them good training so they can choose to be entrepreneurs or work for anyone else at the end of their training. They will be well-equipped to do so.
“Oftentimes, the excuse for bringing in expatriates is that Nigeria doesn’t have experts to do some jobs. This training will sharpen the trainees’ skills and enable them get the requisite certifications and practical knowledge to work in any part of the world.
“This training is not just ordinary corporate social responsibility, it comes with a stipend. We give them (trainees) stipends of N120,000 per month and N1000 per day for lunch as well as tools to work with such as a brand new laptop. They will be trained in project management, safe handling of chemicals, health and safety management, entrepreneurial development, quality management, freight forwarding, Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) certification and ICT certification, among others. We have about 12 training areas, such as quality management.
‘’This is the first time we are doing this kind of training with NCDMB but before now we have been training our staff exposing them to our technical partners and sending them abroad for training. We are oil and gas Service Company; we also do procurement and logistics services, engineering services, asset integrity and maintenance services.
NCDMB Head of Capacity Development, Mrs Angela Okoro, represented the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Simbi Wabote. Kehinde Adebowale of the Nigerian Content Department of Chevron Nigeria Limited represented her company.
