For years, the story of Africa’s oil industry has largely been about crude leaving the ground and foreign companies taking the lead.
But in Nigeria, a different story is gradually emerging — one about Nigerian companies, workers, engineers and businesses taking a bigger share of the opportunities created by the country’s oil and gas industry.
It is a story the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now wants to understand.
A high-level DRC delegation led by the country’s Minister of Hydrocarbons, Simplice Stev Onanga, arrived in Nigeria on Monday for a study tour of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) local-content model.
The visit is not simply about inspecting offices or listening to presentations.
The delegation wants to see how Nigeria moved from depending heavily on foreign expertise in the oil and gas sector to building local capacity that now allows more Nigerian companies and workers to participate in the industry.
Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, who received the delegation in Abuja, said Nigeria had achieved 61 per cent local content capacity since the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act 16 years ago.
Behind that percentage are businesses, engineers, technicians and young Nigerians whose livelihoods are connected to the industry.
Lokpobiri said the divestment of onshore oil and gas assets by international oil companies had also opened opportunities for indigenous companies, including Renaissance Africa Energy Company, Seplat Energy Producing Unlimited and Oando Energy Resources Nigeria Limited.
He said Nigeria now produces more than 1.8 million barrels of crude oil per day, while stressing that Africa must increasingly look inward for solutions to its energy challenges.
«“The solution to Africa’s energy challenges lies within Africa,” he said.»
But the Nigerian model is not without its own challenges.
While deep offshore operations remain largely dominated by foreign companies, the minister said Nigerian operators and service companies have increasingly taken control of land and shallow-water assets.
That shift is part of what the DRC delegation has come to study.
At the centre of Nigeria’s local-content system is funding generated through a one per cent Nigerian Content Development Fund levy on awarded upstream oil and gas contracts.
The NCDMB says its institutional framework and strategic roadmap are targeted at achieving 70 per cent in-country value retention and creating more than 300,000 direct jobs by 2027.
For the DRC delegation, the next few days will provide an opportunity to see what those policies look like beyond government documents.
NCDMB Executive Secretary, Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe, represented by the Director of Corporate Services, Dr. Abdulmalik Halilu, said the Board was ready to share its experience and support the DRC in developing its own local-content framework.
DRC Minister Onanga said his delegation was in Nigeria because it wanted to see for itself what had been achieved.
“We are proud to be in Nigeria to witness what has been accomplished,” he said.
The delegation will visit the NCDMB headquarters in Bayelsa State, fabrication workshops at the Onne Free Zone, an NLNG supplier session and the UniPort Gas Centre.
It will also visit the LADOL/Nigerdock yards and participate in other engagements before the study tour ends on Friday.
For the workers and businesses operating around Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, however, the bigger question is what comes next.
Can local content translate into more jobs for Nigerians?
Can indigenous companies compete at every level of the industry?
And can the experience Nigeria is now sharing with another African oil-producing country become a model for keeping more of Africa’s oil wealth and expertise within Africa?
Those are the questions sitting beneath the numbers as the DRC delegation begins its Nigerian journey.
