By YANGE IKYAA
The African Petroleum Producers Organization (APPO) yesterday declared that it has adopted the Africa Local Content Roundtable, an annual event organized and hosted in Nigeria by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), as a continental programme and that the hosting of the event would now be rotated among APPO member countries each year.
Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim, who is the APPO Secretary General stated this in Lagos where he was delivering a keynote speech at the ongoing Sub-Saharan Africa International Petroleum and Exhibition Conference (SAIPEC).
Last year, the Africa Local Content Roundtable was first held in Nigeria during which a number of APPO member countries were in attendance.
“During the event, I was so impressed such that I said to the NCDMB leadership, the organizers, that this should not be a national affair, it should be a continental affair, and with your permission, I want to take this up to my Executive Board and my Ministerial Council.
And last December 14, we got the approval of the Ministerial Council that Africa Local Content Roundtable is now an APPO pogramme. We are going to be doing this and it is going to go round, not one country, we are going to be rotating among the APPO member countries and that is very important,” said the APPO Secretary General.
He also noted that APPO would be inviting all the national oil companies of its member countries to what he called the “Forum of NOCs of Member Countries,” where important issue of sustainable energy development and economics would be discussed for the good of Africans.
In his own words, “in the past, the issue has always been ministry, ministry, ministry, and believe me, if you continue with the ministry, you are not going to make any headway; you need to work with the operators and that is exactly what we are trying to do. We will work with the ministry, but we want the operators to be fully involved in this.”
On the issue of financing, he also maintained that “seriously speaking, we have no business believing that unless we get money from the West, we can’t produce. What we need to is to tighten our belt. I say this not to just industrialists but also. I think if we are serious, we should be able to say that for the next five years, we are really going to have that belt tightening and do what needs to be done.”
According to him, this is done, Africa will only be borrowing money from the West and, then, “our grandchildren are going to pay dearly for it at the end of the day.” This, Ibrahim said, is not just in Nigeria but it cuts across the whole of the African continent.
“The world is happy to give you all the money you need, and at the end of the day, you are going to suffer for it,” he concluded.