By Rosemary Onuoha
Mr. Val Ojumah, Managing Director of FBN Life Assurance Limited has charged insurance operators to regularly send their staff for training in order to equip them to play effective role in the oil and gas business.

Ojumah who stated this in Lagos noted that the level of knowledge on oil and gas business by some insurance practitioners is relatively low therefore one way of ensuring that companies play actively in the oil and gas business is to demonstrate and show that employees are sent to training institutions.

Ojumah posited that training of insurance personnel could serve as key for the industry to break the myth that surrounds the oil and gas industry.

Meanwhile, Nigerian insurance practitioners have been accused of aiding and abetting oil companies operating in the country to defy rules and regulations guiding oil and gas risk underwriting for their selfish gains.

Mr. Lanre Laoshe, an insurance broker and former House of Representatives member who made the accusation reiterated that ordinarily the oil majors want to play by the rules but insurance practitioners who want to cut corners force them to do otherwise.

In his words “Sometimes these oil majors operating in the country want to obey the laws guiding oil and gas risk underwriting, but we always find a reason for them not to.”

According to Laoshe, the development is not encouraging because the oil companies have tended to see the practice as the standard norm in the industry, thereby throwing crumbs to Nigerian insurance companies while taking the huge chunk of oil business abroad leading to capital flight.

Laoshe lamented that it is the high rate of indiscipline in the insurance industry that has made the practice to go on unabated for a very long time, calling on practitioners in the sector to imbibe the character of discipline.

Also tasking players to be discipline, Prof Joe Irukwu, one time managing director of Nigeria Reinsurance Plc noted that the high level of discipline in the insurance industry in the 60s and 70’s spurred the industry to growth and development despite the absence of enabling laws.

Irukwu who decried the dearth of discipline in the insurance industry now, lamented that the sorry state of affairs in the sector presently was not the case when they were still very much active.

In his words “Presently there are enabling laws to guide the practice of insurance, but it is so sad that the level of discipline has dropped drastically despite these laws,” Irukwu therefore called on insurance practitioners to ensure that they abide by the laws guiding the profession.