Learning to swim without getting wet

Learning to swim without getting wet

THE National Union of Petroleum and Natural
Gas Workers, NUPENG, one of the most
militant unions in African labour history, last
week marked its fortieth anniversary. Back in
1994 when the military held Nigeria in vile
grip, NUPENG sent out a call for the unions
to rescue the country. The regime of General
Sani Abacha was particularly brutish, nasty
and bloody. It was a dictatorship that had no
rules, respected none and included the
bombing of buses especially those conveying
soldiers, as part of governance. Not
surprisingly, other unions including the
central labour organisation, the Nigeria
Labour Congress, NLC, chickened out.
NUPENG, backed by the Petroleum and
Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of
Nigeria, PENGASSAN, took on the military in
weeks of strikes and protests. Even when the
strikes were crushed and its leaders herded
into years of solitary confinement, NUPENG
held its head high. As part of this
anniversary, NUPENG invited me as a
discussant at its roundtable on “Local
Content in the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industry:
Wherein lies the interest of Nigerian
Workers?”
To me, the Local Content in the Nigeria Oil
and Gas Industry as explained in the Nigerian
Oil and Gas Industry Content Development,
NOGICD, Act No 2 of 2010 is not about
restructuring the oil industry which has
always favoured the foreign ownership,
exploitation and control of the industry to the
detriment of the Nigerian people and state. It
is not about the Nigerian people owning
their oil and gas resources or having a
greater say in it. It is not about the cry
against individuals owning or being awarded
oil blocs while most of the states in the
country are so cash-strapped, that they
cannot pay salaries. It isn’t about oil workers
having a greater say in an industry they
have helped to build for sixty one years now.
It is not about ending the enslavement of
workers in a lucrative industry that has
converted almost all permanent work into
casual contract with no guaranteed job
security. It is not about the Nigerianization of
the Oil and Gas industry, 45 years after the
Indigenization law.
Rather, Local Content in the Nigeria Oil and
Gas Industry is like asking that a little sugar
be added to a tasteless jug of tea for the
consumption a handful of local players in
the industry. The main objective in Local
Content provides that: “Nigerian independent
operators shall be given first consideration in
the award of oil blocs, oil field licences, oil
lifting licences and in all projects for which
contract is to be awarded in the Nigerian oil
and gas industry subject to the fulfilment of
such conditions as may be specified by the
Minister.”
The Local Content law is like telling
Nigerians, ‘You can sniff indigenization, but
you are forbidden from eating its fruit.’
Seeking to add local content in an industry
in the hands of foreigners is like telling
Nigerians ‘You can swim in the river, but
don’t get wet.’ It is instructive that the
specificity of local content, and how far it can
dilute the dominant foreign content in the Oil
and Gas industry in the country, is at the
discretion of whoever finds himself as the
Minister of Petroleum. In other words, the
power and the net worth of whoever is the
Minister in charge of that Ministry is greatly
enhanced by the Act. That in plain language
means that if the overall foreign Lords in our
Oil and Gas industry can pocket the
Petroleum Minister at any given time, the
local content component can be jeopardized.
There is a sense it can be argued that the
Local Content Act is a long term, if
circuitous journey in the desert to reach a
Nigerianization promised land. These are in
the realms of tactics and strategies; to
eventually indigenize the Nigerian Oil and
Gas industry without annoying the foreign
masters or provoking a Western backlash.
Government estimates that lack of local
content had from independence in 1960 to
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