By Adekunle Adekoya

GODWIN Izomor, an engineer, is Managing Director of MG Vowgas, an EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) company based in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State. Recently, the International Standards Organization awarded MG Vowgas the ISO 901-2015 Quality certification, a development Izomor says will further boost his company’s presence in the marketplace. In the conversation below, Izomor speaks on the oil and gas industry, his operations, and industrialization in Nigeria generally. Excerpts:

What is the ISO certification all about?

ISO 901-2015 is a quality certification which specifies that every product coming from our fabrication yard meets international standards and will help us to internally organize our management system. That is the essence of ISO 901-2015. It will help us to establish different departments and train them to meet the entire requirement needed to bring the standards needed.

Izomor

How will this certification impact on your procedures, services, and staff?

We are always sending people for training, which is part of our plans consistently. For example we are sending three personnel to US this year to train on gas and gas management. We are also sending another set to Turkey to train them on how to fabricate furnaces. Also, we import a lot of machinery, and in the process, we train staff to assemble, service and repair as the case may be, and manage them effectively to the set standards needed.

Given the investments in staff and machinery at your fabrication yard, what level of patronage have you been getting?

For now, those in the know are aware that the industry has been down for over three years but is gradually picking up. However, the process of contracting in Nigeria takes up to one to two years to mature. We are in the stage of promises but gradually as the sector rebounds, in the next two to three years, we would be able to know where the industry is going.

Are you servicing any company in the oil and gas industry?

I would say almost all the refineries want to work with us, but they have no money. The modular refineries don’t have money. I think the government is seeking for ways from the CBN to support them. But you see, you can only support a business that you are aware that the people running the business know what they are doing, no matter how laudable the business may look like.

So it implies that the promoters, investors or the banks must know whether they know what they are doing or what they are going into. The issue about modular refineries is a different ball game entirely and promoters of some of those refineries do not know what it takes to run a refinery; they don’t have the financial capacity, training and personnel. So it is going to take a great deal of synergy to bring those things on board. If we can recall there was a ground breaking ceremony of a refinery in Akwa-Ibom during the Obasanjo years. The foundation was laid but nothing has happened since then. Undertaking a refinery is not peanuts business; it is a business that has to do with strong knowledge and financial base of what you are going to do.

Other than the oil and gas sector, in which sector can your company play active roles?

We can work for everybody — the breweries, power sector, all. For the power sector, we can work with the generation companies. Fabrication is everything and everywhere in manufacturing. It is the heart of manufacturing. Most of the machines we are importing now to the country, we strongly believe we would grow to the point where they would be manufactured here in Nigeria. That is our long term plan. Fabrication is the heart of the industry.

Would completion of Ajaokuta Steel and the rolling mills be complementary to operations in your sector?

Our fathers who established these companies did not make mistake. Ajaokuta steel has been there for the past 40 years and has not been able to produce anything. We cannot industrialize as a country because if you don’t produce steel, you would then import them and your product would still remain expensive internationally and so you cannot compete.

You are getting expensive products due to lack of power, and then you are importing steel for your products. However, there is no way your product can be competitive in the international market, except we have our steel sector running and our aluminium working as well, without which we are not going anywhere. Remember that manufacturing is gradually moving from steel to aluminium. We must put these two major companies to work for Nigeria to enable us industrialise.

Some people are saying that Russia technology is obsolete; that is why Ajaokuta is where it is now?

Not so true. What affected Ajaokuta is that the Military were trying to please America and the West, so they abandoned Russia so that the West can support their government and remain in power. That was the politics that played and killed Ajaokuta.

It was not because of the technology. Most of the steel companies all over the world still use the old technology and have not changed. It was just the politics which also played in the aluminium industry also.

Russia built the aluminium smelters in Ikot-Abasi. But we want to now sell it to an American company because we want support from America. That is the problem and not because the technologies are obsolete as claimed but because we want support from America.