Dr. Ernest Nwapa, executive secretary, Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has called for a continuous engagement between his agency and Institute of software practitioners of Nigeria (ISPON) for the application of local content policy in the software used by oil and Gas companies in the country.
He stated this while delivery a keynote speech at this year’s president dinner of ISPON held in Lagos over the weekend.
He said that local content is about things done in Nigeria and that his agency is today focusing on in-country value addition which includes promotion of capacity and use of local resources among others.
“In doing these we have been able to create robust local supply chain,” he said.
According to him,’ implementing local in any sector of the economy requires a strong political will to enforce which contributed to the success my agency has recorded so far’.
He cited a policy where Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) in oil and gas are not allowed to supply anything to any oil company without evidence of manufacturing something in the country. “This is innovative way of improving processes. In communications technology sector you can insist that certain percentage of software in use must be local,” he said.
Nwapa expressed the readiness of his agency to collaborate with ISPON the way it has done with power sector to plug into its capacity building in training engineers for structural and other electrical and mechanical design in that sector.
“A software engineer who wants to develop an application in the oil and gas sector have many Nigerians working in the sector that can explain to him what the operations are all about, which will guide him in that regard. We don’t have that big gap like before when Nigerians are not allowed in some operational areas in the oil and gas sector,” he added.
Earlier, Pius Okigbo Jr. president, ISPON, in his remark, said that local content by its very nature, is a deliberate policy focused on economic growth.
“At its core is the principle of human development and the need to develop and deepen human capabilities as well as build the requisites skills at all levels of value chain. From inception, the Nigerian Local Content policy has been and continues to be focused primarily on engineering and successfully so.”
He explained that within this space, exists a myriad of opportunities in software and related software services, the scope of which lies in the hundreds of millions of dollars.