The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has raised the alarm over Nigeria’s widening energy workforce and technical skills gap, warning that the country risks losing control of its energy future if urgent steps are not taken to close the gap.
The Chief Human Resources Officer, NNPC Limited, Kazachiyang Nuhu, said the convergence of the Petroleum Industry Act, the Decade of Gas, rising participation by local operators and the global energy transition were creating a demand for technical talent that the industry was struggling to develop fast enough.
Nuhu spoke Thursday at the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria HCD Conference and Expo in Warri, Delta State.
In a presentation at the OGTAN conference, Nuhu maintained that the changing energy landscape, driven by policy, market shifts, technology and changing expectations of younger workers, had created a technical talent demand that Nigeria could not afford to ignore.
He said artificial intelligence, digitalisation and automation were compressing skill cycles, while capital was increasingly moving towards liquefied natural gas, cleaner molecules and low-carbon opportunities.
Nuhu warned that unless the workforce was urgently reskilled and repositioned, Nigeria could lose its ability to effectively participate in the emerging energy economy.
“Reskill, reposition or risk becoming a spectator in our own industry,” he told stakeholders at the conference.
He identified workforce and skills gaps, an ageing workforce and brain drain, commonly referred to as ‘japa’, among the major challenges confronting the industry. He also identified a widening disconnect between academia and industry, particularly the gap between what was taught in educational institutions and what the industry required from employees from day one.
Other challenges highlighted included weak safety culture, spills and flaring; vandalism, crude theft, surveillance and metering gaps; supply of quality materials and equipment; ageing assets, reliability and project overruns; digital oilfield and environmental, social and governance skills; as well as refinery operations, product quality, LPG safety and trade finance.
Nuhu noted that the solution required a fundamental shift in how human capital development was approached across the industry, noting that training must become more closely linked to production, safety, reliability and cost, while programmes must be based on current field realities rather than generic manuals.
He called for training to be benchmarked against global standards and supported by emerging technologies such as simulators, digital twins, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. “Every naira spent on training must translate to a safer plant, a skilled employee, and a stronger balance sheet,” he added.
Nuhu disclosed that NNPC would also change the basis on which it engaged training providers, stressing that trainers must understand the direction in which the industry was heading. “We will partner only with trainers who teach the industry we are becoming, not the one we are leaving behind,” he said.
He said the company was already developing its workforce through initial professional development, career pathways, industry exposure, leadership pipelines, mentorship and knowledge transfer.
According to him, the ultimate measure of Nigerian content should be whether Nigerians were acquiring the expertise required to lead major projects to international standards, saying, “Not how many Nigerians were hired, but how many world-class Nigerians led the project.”
Nuhu argued that true local content should be measured by expertise rather than percentages, with future industry needs spanning technical, digital, commercial and human capabilities.
He said this would include skills in renewable integration, gas-to-power, AI, predictive maintenance, energy economics, carbon markets, sustainable finance, adaptive leadership and systems thinking.
He challenged Nigeria to determine whether it would become a contributor or merely a consumer of the future energy economy. He called on industry players, trainers and academia to move from parallel efforts towards a unified capacity compact.
OGTAN President, Chris Osarunmewense, stressed that the association was seeking to sustain conversations around how Nigeria could develop a workforce capable of delivering on the promises of companies operating in the oil and gas industry.
Osarunmewense said human capital development was a continuous process that required the industry to recognise and nurture people’s potential.
“Human capital develops by progression. At OGTAN, therefore, we treasure the potential of people who have developed human capital in nature to effectively operate within the oil and gas industry,” the OGTAN boss said.
He added that the conference was designed to bring stakeholders together and discuss the ways to address the skill gaps in the industry. According to him, the decision to hold the 2026 conference in Warri, rather than Lagos or Abuja, was deliberate, given the city’s place in the history and development of Nigeria’s petroleum industry.
“For us, this choice was meaningful. Warri is not simply a venue; it is part of the history of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry,” he added.
Osarunmewense said the Niger Delta had for decades remained at the heart of Nigeria’s petroleum industry, with the region’s history of exploration, production, processing, services, technical manpower and community development deeply intertwined with the country’s broader energy economy.
The OGTAN president said the association wanted international participants to experience the Niger Delta not merely as a geographical location associated with petroleum production but as a region with talent, enterprise, technical expertise, institutions, communities and significant human capital potential.
He said the collaboration with the Petroleum Training Institute further strengthened Warri’s suitability for the conference because of the institute’s role in technical and professional training in the petroleum sector.
Osarunmewense noted that the industry’s human capital challenges could not be resolved by any single stakeholder, stressing the need for collaboration across the value chain.
“The challenges before the industry are too complex for any single organisation to solve. The government alone cannot solve it. Regulators cannot solve it alone. Oil and gas companies cannot solve it alone. Training providers cannot solve it alone. Universities and technical institutions cannot do so alone either. We need collaboration across the value chain,” he emphasised.