The Executive Director, Hobark International Limited, Dr. Emmanuel Okoroafor, is one of Nigeria’s intellectual exports to the European Union. With a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Université Denis Diderot (Paris VII), Paris, France, Okoroafor has held various teaching and research positions in universities in the United Kingdom (UK) and France and a technology-management position in a blue-chip British company. He is a registered chartered engineer of the UK Engineering Council, and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in the UK. 

Okoroafor pilots the business of Hobark International Limited, an integrated oilfield service company, from its office in Mayfair, London. In this interview with journalists in Lagos, he put forward templates for training technical personnel for the Nigerian petroleum industry, growing the capacity of local companies, and taming inflation in the nation’s economy. The Guardian’s ONYEDIKA AGBEDO was there

The upstream petroleum industry is transitioning from International Oil Companies (IOCs) to independents. How do you think Nigeria should manage the challenges associated with the emerging crew change?
I think we have many suitably qualified Nigerians who have been trained and exposed to the global industry. Their experience and expertise will enable them to run the show if given the opportunity.

Yes, indeed, some of the big companies like Shell, Exxon, Schlumberger, and Halliburton have, from time to time, brought Nigerians to run their operations in-country. However, these guys come with a background of opportunity, whereas there are people who do not have that background but are suitable for the jobs.

In Shell, for instance, a person in a leadership position will come with a background and mentality of corporate Shell.

However, people often prefer someone from a local service company to the IOCs. This is because the training that they get from these companies and the world that they have travelled makes them deal with issues like businessmen. But under the clout of the IOCs, the system propels itself and you are only an administrator.

I believe that Nigeria is still good where we are, now. The IOCs can go ahead to make their money. However, they can do that by getting Nigerians to take up the management of both IOCs and independent operators. That way, we can prepare for the inevitable crew change.
There is the longstanding problem of retraining fresh Nigerian engineers in the industry. How do you think the industry and government can tinker with the tertiary education curricula to enable Nigerian graduates to hit the ground running?

In my days, before you graduated from any technical field of study, you must embark on an industry placement; that was made to form part of your citation before graduation.

The host company had the responsibility to evaluate you, and if you were good, they would make you an offer upon graduation. So, apart from the training that you got from the university, the industry placement provided you with the necessary tools.

If you learn something today, it is for a task today; for tomorrow, you need to tool up! Therefore, for Nigerian graduates to hit the ground running, they must undergo industry placements because they need hands-on training. They need industry placements in companies or agencies. These companies or agencies will provide them with the opportunity to participate in ongoing projects. By so doing, the students will gain the tools needed, both in practice and in communication.

So, in essence, in preparing them for direct entry into the industry, there are two ways to go about it. One is to send them to some of the training institutions. That is, either the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) or Petroleum Training Institute (PTI). The other way is to equip the universities in such a way that an engineering student is involved in engineering projects within the university.

The theoretical studies in class will be put to work in real projects. Then, in their third year, they can go on industrial placements organised by the institutions. The companies they work with would write back to the universities, sharing details of the performance of the students. This is the way most present-day oil workers and executives got their jobs in those days.

The likes of Schlumberger, Shell, and others go to the universities to interview students, offer them industrial placements and most were offered jobs at the end of their studies. We can make it happen again.

Every industry is aligning with new global standards on governance processes, technological innovations, and environmental responsibility. What gaps can Nigeria fill locally to tame the mentality of going elsewhere to upscale?
That is a great question. The industry in Nigeria and the education institutions should work hand-in-hand, just as the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen; the Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and other institutions in the United Kingdom. What happens in these other countries is that the government and the industry work in collaboration with the universities to fund research programmes that provide innovations and new solutions to industry operations. You do not see graduates from their universities going somewhere else to learn something about oil and gas because it is part of the programme. The same thing could happen here!

Universities like the University of Port Harcourt, and the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, have very good engineering programmes. But how many companies from the industries in the country give them the required collaboration? That is what is lacking!

In Nigeria, collaboration is difficult, especially among the hundreds of private trainers and associations. Is there any role that regulatory bodies can play in harnessing internal resources and creating efficiencies that will solidify these OGTAN companies into Centres of Excellence for the industry?
Centres of excellence are good. But you do not form them outside existing structures. Warwick University in the UK is a world centre of excellence for manufacturing, which is funded by prominent organisations, including Rolls Royce and British Aerospace. It is the same thing with oil companies and institutions in the U.S.

However, in Nigeria, we like to create new units that are politicised and staffed with cronies, relatives, old boys, and so on, to the extent that these institutions lose their primary focus.

We already have centres of excellence like PTDF and the one established by Hobark. Yes, Hobark in collaboration with Halliburton and the Akwa Ibom State Government set up an Oil and Gas Training and Research Centre, in Uyo. That cost us a lot of money. But it is not being used because the PTDF set up another one in Port Harcourt. In Nigeria, everything is duplicated. We must copy good things from others.

My point here is that we should stop creating all these new things! For instance, it would be wrong to keep a centre of excellence for gas monetisation inside NNPC. Keep it inside a university, in the industry hub for it to be effective in delivering the national aspiration for the gas industry.

So, in my opinion, the most effective way to groom trainees for the petroleum industry is to use universities. I cited the University of Warwick, as an example. The University of Cambridge also has many centres of excellence, the same as the Imperial College. The students passing through these centres are the masters of the future. Therefore, what we need is to do the right thing using existing structures.

This issue plugs into the raging debate about the recommendation for replicating the successes of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) across all sectors of the economy. There are differing positions about having a central regulator, having multiple local content units across all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs). How do we have a single local content regulator that works?
There is always the tendency of over-concentrating attention and burden on a system that has proved impactful. The NCDMB or its current executive secretary has proved efficient and effective in oil and gas. If we overburden him with other units from all the MDAs in the country, the agency would either be too powerful, distracted, or corrupted.

I think for now, to avoid such, we can retain what we have at the NCDMB so that it will continue to set the standard for other sectors. The NCDMB has become a success. Other agencies and their local content models, be it cabotage or anything, could still be successes. But we must be careful how we bring them all together.

The NCDMB will soon open industrial parks and of course, some people will expect free rent for a few years, and if care is not taken, they can take it for many years. However, this can also lead to an industrial innovation centre of excellence in Bayelsa State, where we have robust industry operations. The young generation of Nigerians, instead of going to Aberdeen, would now go to Bayelsa.

Other countries like the UK also practice local content. I studied in France as a postgraduate student. The French has local content law, and sometimes we confuse it with racism. The Ministry of Interior and the Foreign Ministry are the regulators because they are the ones that issue the permits. The slogan was: ‘Jobs first to the French and after the French, to the francophone countries.’ This was before they became part of the EU.

They know they control domestic unemployment by exporting their human capital all over the world, especially to francophone countries. So, they never mention their local content to the global community. They keep it quiet.

The NCDMB and Engr. Simbi Wabote has tried. But we need to carefully tone down its voice on the international stage. Nigeria is the greatest exporter of human capital in Africa. Tomorrow, other countries, even within African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), may adopt stringent local content laws that would require our people to leave. Foreign nations that began local content policy never mentioned it. You would normally encounter local content restrictions only when applying for a visa or work permit. Going back to the main question, a big organisation is not the way.

Let’s turn to the service side of the crew change. Big service multinationals like Halliburton, Schlumberger, KBR, Bakers Hughes, and others are giving way to local companies like Oilserv, Oildata, Hobark, and many others in Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN). These local firms are not beneficiaries of PTDF, or other capacity-building agencies that have gulped billions of dollars. How do we manage interventions to deliver on real local capacity growth?
If the government of the day acts in the interest of the country, strategies must forge inter-agency collaboration on local content policy implementation. There’s nothing wrong with the ministries of interior and external affairs providing diplomatic and political backing to the NCDMB. They know who to let in and who not to let in under the provisions of the NOGICD Act 2010.

Yes, Oilserv, Vhelberg, Hobark, and others – these guys worked hard. Nothing was given to them on the platter of gold. Why do I say that? If they had gone to the Federal Government, they wouldn’t have gotten anything. They came together and formed PETAN. The NCDMB is a recent phenomenon. These guys fought hard by themselves, and they are progressing.

Now, what they need to do is to continue in their struggle and carry along other young Nigerians. In Nigeria today, if you wait on the Federal Government, no help will come your way. So, our local service firms should study and learn from the big multinationals. I can tell you that.

The big organisations: Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Halliburton, and others started as small companies like the PETAN companies. But different companies came together to form these mega companies through mergers and acquisitions that now dominate the world.

In Nigeria, we have over 200 companies competing for the same thing! So, I hope that someday, organisations like Oilserv will merge with another EPIC company to grow in size and capacity.

In Hobark, there is an internal consolidation among the subsidiaries. The internal cross patronage retains capital within the group. So, other PETAN companies can explore the growth route through mergers and acquisitions.

Merging will sustain the gains we have achieved locally, mainly through internal growth. And pursuing inorganic growth requires the mentality of sustainability, which entails that you bring other people that share the same dream of driving the business to sustainable growth.

A successful merger must come in such a way that the businesses with related interests come together to complement one another. This will sustain what has been achieved and leads to continuous development.

At SAIPEC, you will notice that there is a pattern of growth among indigenous service companies. They have all attained some level of growth, but their growth is still very fragile. If you have something that you think is overgrown, then you must integrate into a larger group. There is no need to carry it along. If we want to compete with international companies, we must think and act like them.

Finally, what is wrong with Nigeria? Why is growth so slow-paced?” 
The main problem is our choice of leadership. We choose the leaders that we want, and they deal with us the way they think we should be dealt with. We don’t have a very progressive mindset in Nigeria. If someone’s interest is protected in what he sees wrong, he allows it to happen. That is not right. But if we insist on what is right, then everybody will benefit from the process.

So, we need to reset our mindsets. This will make us choose good and honest leaders over leaders that promise heaven and deliver hell.

Good leadership can address all the things you asked me today. Good leadership would have taken the appropriate course of action by not building new universities but going to existing universities and trying to improve them.

Also, there is an urgent need to bring down inflation. My mum brought us all up with her small salary as a schoolteacher in Aba, years ago. Our father died when we were very young, but she was able to do that because inflation was not what it is today. She was not a trader and she refused to remarry. She did it all alone with her meagre salary.

So, a good leader would control the economy in such a manner that salaries would solve family problems; and low-income earners are empowered to take on family responsibilities.

Right now, in the UK, people are asking for higher salaries because of inflation. But if you give higher salaries, inflation will respond to that. So, the UK Government and Central bank are trying to bring down inflation, not pay higher wages. This is a sustainable way to restore value to the wages of teachers, miners, and railway workers.

So, all the things we talk about boil down to enthroning good leadership and reorientation of national mindset. Resetting the national mindset is a function of well-orchestrated civic orientation, which must be inculcated in the citizens from an early age.