Partnering for Development

Fri, Apr 19, 2013
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Featured, Oil & Gas

The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board and the Nigerian Navy explore areas of collaboration in capacity development in oil and gas industry

By Maureen Chigbo  |  Apr. 29, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT

THE Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, and the Nigerian Navy are to collaborate on ways they can develop and utilise capacity in the oil and gas industry. Ernest Nwapa, executive secretary, NCDMB, and Rear Admiral Akinjola Johnson, commandant of the Nigerian Naval Engineering College, stated this when they met at the board’s headquarters in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.

Nwapa said the Board was working to identify, develop and maximise how to utilise facilities across the country to enhance work in the industry, as well as conduct training programmes. He expressed the willingness of the Board to work with the Navy to achieve the common objectives. According to him, the Board’s efforts are in compliance with the directive of Dieziani Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources and chairman of the Board’s Governing Council on capacity development.

In line with the directive, the Navy Dockyard in Lagos, is already being used for heavy fabrication by some service companies. As Nwapa put: “many countries in the world have integrated their armed forces in the advancement of national technology and the NCDMB will equally do so by consolidating on the existing relationship between the military and the industry.

Nwapa recalled the Board’s visit to the Navy Engineering College, Sapele, in 2011, and said that the institution’s machine shop has some capacity the oil and gas industry can use. The machine shop will be tested for space and facilities and considered for the pilot scheme of the proposed Training Centre of Excellence that the NCDMB is developing in collaboration with Petrofac, an international training agency, and the Oil and Gas Training Association of Nigeria, OGTAN.

He advised the navy high command to further invest in the development of the college so that it could be upgraded to an international degree awarding institution in compliance with the standards set by Petrofac and OGTAN.“Our visit to the various training facilities to be used for the Center of Excellence will commence shortly. I encourage you to improve the facility to meet the required standard,” he said.

Reacting, Johnson said the vaval authorities were committed to improving the facilities in the college to ensure that it was part of the planned training programme of the industry and also Dieziani Alison-Madueke meet other national demands. According to him, the essence of their meeting was to galvanize the synergy that had existed between the NCDMB and the College for the development of Nigeria.

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