- By Halimah Olamide
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has urged the indigenous oil operators to either comply with Nigerian Content Act or continue to face the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The Executive Secretary (ES), Engr. Simbi Wabote, gave this charge at breakfast meeting with members of Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) in Abuja.
He lamented the increasing number of the indigenous operators who seem to be working across purpose with the board’s Act by non-compliance.
According to Wabote, the NCDMB Act enables the board to protect indigenous producers especially in the oil and gas sector.
“They find it difficult to pay the one per cent levy stipulated by the Act. That is why the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) is now after some of them,” he said.
While decrying the current state of indigenous producers’ lack of compliance, which he called economic sabotage, Wabote said his agency could not have fought for the local operators only to turn back and bite the fingers that fed them.
“We fought for you but you now sabotage the oil economy” he said while also accusing them of harbouring a sense of entitlement to desist.
He also noted that the indigenous operators try to save costs and care for profit more than national interest.
“They want to be exempted from the Law Content Act. We have made it clear that the law is for all” he said.
Wabote equally said it is wrong for a local contractor to win a job and employ 90 per cent expatriate experts, thereby causing job loss to Nigerians.”
He also accused them of project execution without getting approval and non-registration of their foreign workers in the expatriate ledger.
The ES further said Nigeria has moved from three per cent local content value in the oil industry to 54 per cent.
He warned that if indigenous operators do not arrest the growth path by capturing the regulatory system, Nigeria will hit the 70 per cent target.
Wabote, therefore encouraged indigenous oil producers to comply with the board Act in their own interest and that of the nation.