TheCable

Teslim Folarin (pictured), chairman of the senate committee on local content, says the upper legislative chamber is making amendments to the local content act to cover all sectors of the economy.

Speaking with reporters at the weekend in Abuja, Folarin said there is a need to amend the act after 10 years of its existence.

The senator said stakeholders have requested that the local content act for other sectors should not be merged with that of oil and gas.

“There are two aspects to this bill, having run from 10 years since 2010 when you have been running a bill for 10 years, it needs a bit of overhauling and so we then thought about expanding local content act to other sectors of the economy. So the question is how do we go about it,” he said.

“We had stakeholders meeting in Yenegoa in December and the stakeholders were vehemently against housing the whole thing together under the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) act. Their reason is very simple, oil and gas remain the mainstay of our economy – any attempt to lump all the other sectors of the economy with them may not augur well.

“I’m not a fan of big government but reduce the cost of governance – the best way in our own view is to use an existent structure which is the MDAs, in all MDAs there are procurement departments, so any contract over N100 million, that will be subjected to local content. Let me stress that it is still a bill, not an act, that is our own thinking. When we engage stakeholders, when we look at their views we will listen to them.

“Look at the NOGICD act, there are some aspects that the operators are not happy about. For instance, we moved the contribution from one percent to two percent, we have received so many complaints about it. We will hear them out and we will tell them what are our reasons too.”

The amendment bill scaled second reading at the senate on May 19.

The bill is seeking to create a Nigeria content development committee to be chaired by vice-president to develop policies on local content.

The proposed law provides for preference to Nigerian citizens and companies in the procurement of goods and services in all sector of the economy.

It also seeks the transfer of skills and technology to Nigerians during the execution of projects where public funds belonging to the federal government or any of its agencies are used.