By Ochereome Nnanna

SOMETIME in September last year, I came across an interesting article in an online newspaper, accusing the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) of “lying” that it had not received a petition from ARCO, a Nigerian oil services company detailing its travails at the hand of Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) over a maintenance contract in the Niger Delta.

What struck me as the sadly typical deadbeat attitude of Nigerian public sector workers was that the ARCO letter calling for the intervention of the NCDMB was dated May 9th 2013, over one year before! It was entitled: “Actualising Local Content Development in Nigeria – A Brief on ARCO’s Experience in the Nigeria Agip Oil Company Maintenance Contract At OBOB/Kwale/Ebocha Gas Plants”, and addressed to the Secretary of the Board, Ernest Nwapa.

Pray, how could a government agency charged with the job of strengthening the stakes of Nigerian citizens in their own oil industry coldly reply it had not received the petition after over a year it was sent? And since that time, what steps has NCDMB taken to wade into the dispute and resolve it in accordance with the laws promoting the Nigerian Content?

Even though the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) are said to have severally intervened in favour of ARCO in this dispute, it does not seem to have any restraining effect on NAOC, as the foreign company and one of NNPC’s joint venture partners has pressed on with its apparent determination to drive ARCO out of the oil industry.

What concerns me and should bother all patriotic Nigerians is the unbending temerity of these multinational oil companies which have continued to employ all sorts of dirty tricks to ensure that Nigerians, even those who have the requisite technical qualification and experience, do not break into the epicenter of the industry or survive for long when they get there. These foreigners are chiefly responsible (through their local fronts within and outside the National Assembly) for the failure of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) to become law.

In 2002, Exxon Mobil said Akwa Ibom people could not be given top management jobs because they did not have suitably qualified indigenes. This sparked off protests, and the Akwa Ibom State Government published the names of qualified specialists from the state. Eventually, Mobil appointed an indigene as external relations manager.

But in the case of NAOC, it is employing total brute force against ARCO to push it out of the contract which the NNPC awarded it with ARCO as its technical partner to maintain the above-mentioned gas plant.

ARCO and NAOC have actually enjoyed a cozy working relationship for more than thirty years. Things started to fall apart when in 2007 the Niger Delta militants forced expatriate staff of oil companies out of the oilfields. For more than six month, expatriate staff of NAOC abandoned the OBOB/Kwale/Ebocha gas plants, and ARCO’s local engineers were able to successfully maintain the facility until the crisis was over. When NAOC’s expatriate staff returned to the fields to find their facilities in perfect working shape, the company commended ARCO, but probably also feared that indigenous company was now good enough to pose a threat to its stranglehold on that section of the industry.

NAOC then launched wars of attrition. First, they poached many of ARCO’s engineers and precipitated Labour crisis in the company through discriminatory allowances to engineers on the gas plant with a view to grounding the indigenous company. They downgraded ARCO from a technical partner to a subcontractor and brought in a Nigeria-based Italian company, Plantgeria, to drain ARCO’s experts and muscle it out of business. NAOC, in total disregard of the directives of the NNPC/NAPIMS that ARCO should continue to maintain the gas plants, ordered ARCO’s engineers out of the plants, a move that could throw the indigenous company’s over 400 highly specialised staff out of work.

ARCO went to court to seek legal redress. The Federal High Court in Port Harcourt presided over by Justice Lambo Akanbi, fixed the next hearing of the case for October 26th, 2015. His injunction for all parties to maintain the status quo was violated by NAOC, which is determined to force ARCO’s engineers off the gas plant.

Now, we go back to the question: why is it that the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act (NOGID, otherwise known as the Nigerian Content Act of 2010) has not been brought to bear on this expensive tussle? The law provides for the preferential consideration of indigenous operators which demonstrate possession of equipment, qualified staff and capacity in the award of contracts in our oilfields and for the maintenance of oil facilities. There is nowhere in the law or any other Act where a foreign oil company is empowered to flagrantly violate the rights of local oil service firms and operate in contempt of the courts of the land with impunity.

This matter has now gone beyond just NAOC and ARCO as private businesses. It is now a matter of national urgency requiring the attention of the National Assembly and the Presidency, especially as the court rulings are now barefacedly ignored by a foreign transgressor. It is time for the federal government to find out why the regulators of the oil industry cannot seem able to rein in a rampaging multinational, which bolted when the militants struck, abandoning the plants only to come back when trouble was over. ARCO stood in the gap and justified the vision of putting more Nigerians in the industry.

When things like these happen and public officers abdicate their responsibilities, corruption is usually not far from the picture. The Presidency and National Assembly should find out why the laws on boosting Nigerian content are not being enforced here.

Unless we consciously hand over our oil industry to qualified and competent Nigerians, we will never really be able to enjoy the full benefits of being an oil-producing nation.